Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 65.djvu/535

Rh fall back on those tangible manifestations which are to be studied only by field observation and experimental breeding.

The breeding-pen is to us what the test-tube is to the chemist—an instrument whereby we examine the nature of our organisms and determine empirically what for brevity I may call their genetic properties. As unorganized substances have their definite properties, so have the several species and varieties which form the materials of our experiments. Every attempt to determine these definite properties contributes immediately to the solution of that problem of problems, the physical constitution of a living organism. In those morphological studies which I suppose most of us have in our time pursued, we sought inspiration from the belief that in the examination of present normalities we were tracing the past, the phylogenetic order of our types, the history—as we conceived—of evolution. In the work which I am now pressing upon your notice we may claim to be dealing not only with the present and the past, but with the future also.

On such an occasion as this it is impossible to present to you in detail the experiments—some exceedingly complex—already made in response to this newer inspiration. I must speak of results, not of methods. At a later meeting, moreover, there will be opportunities of exhibiting practically to those interested some of the more palpable illustrations. It is also impossible to-day to make use of the symbolic demonstrations by which the lines of analysis must be represented. The time can not be far distant when ordinary Mendelian formulæ will be mere as in præsenti to a biological audience. Nearly five years have passed since this extraordinary rediscovery was made known to the scientific world by the practically simultaneous papers of De Vries, Correns and Tschermak, not to speak of thirty-five years of neglect endured before. Yet a phenomenon comparable in significance with any that biological science has revealed remains the intellectual possession of specialists. We still speak sometimes of Mendel's hypothesis or theory, but in truth the terms have no strict application. It is no theory that water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen, though we can not watch the atoms unite, and it is no theory that the blue Andalusian fowl I produce was made by the meeting of germ-cells bearing respectively black and a peculiar white. Both are incontrovertible facts deduced from observation. The two facts have this in common also, that their perception gives us a glimpse into that hidden order out of which the seeming disorder of our world is built. If I refer to Mendelian 'theory,' therefore, in the words with which Bacon introduced his Great Instauration, 'I entreat men to believe that it is not an opinion to be held, but a work to be done; and to be well assured that I am laboring to lay the foundation, not of any sect or doctrine, but of human utility and power.'