Mendel's principles of heredity: A defenceMendel, Gregor
Science
Mendel's principles of heredity: A defence
Mendel, Gregor
Heredity; Hybridization; Mendel's law; Weldon, Walter Frank Raphael. Mendel's laws of alternative inheritance in peas
On 17th December 1900 I delivered a Report to the Evolution Committee
of the Royal Society on the experiments in Heredity undertaken by Miss
E. R. Saunders and myself. This report has been offered to the Society
for publication and will I understand shortly appear. In it we have
attempted to show the extraordinary significance of Mendel’s principle,
to point out what in his results is essential and what subordinate, the
ways in which the principle can be extended to apply to a diversity
of more complex phenomena--of which some are incautiously cited by
Professor Weldon as conflicting facts--and lastly to suggest a few
simple terms without which (or some equivalents) the discussion of such
phenomena is difficult. Though it is impossible here to give an outline
of facts and reasoning there set out at length, I feel that his article
needs an immediate reply. Professor Weldon is credited with exceptional
familiarity with these topics, and his paper is likely to be accepted
as a sufficient statement of the case. Its value will only be known to
those who have either worked in these fields themselves or have been at
the trouble of thoughtfully studying the original materials.
The nature of Professor Weldon’s article may be most readily indicated
if I quote the summary of it issued in a paper of abstracts sent out
with Review copies of the Part. This paper was most courteously sent to
me by an editor of _Biometrika_ in order to call my attention to the
article on Mendel, a subject in which he knew me to be interested. The
abstract is as follows.
“Few subjects have excited so much interest in the last year or two
as the laws of inheritance in hybrids. Professor W. F. R. Weldon
describes the results obtained by Mendel by crossing races of Peas
which differed in one or more of seven characters. From a study of
the work of other observers, and from examination of the ‘Telephone’
group of hybrids, the conclusion is drawn that Mendel’s results
do not justify any general statement concerning inheritance in
cross-bred Peas. A few striking cases of other cross-bred plants and
animals are quoted to show that the results of crossing cannot, as
Mendel and his followers suggest, be predicted from a knowledge of
the characters of the two parents crossed without knowledge of the
more remote ancestry.”
Such is the judgment a fellow-student passes on this mind
“_Voyaging through strange seas of thought alone._”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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