Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 79.djvu/327

Rh is yet known. But leaving the question of curl on one side, we have in regard to the length and fineness of wool, a problem which genetic experiment ought to be able to solve. Note that in it, as in almost all problems of the "yield" of any product of farm or garden, two distinct elements are concerned—the one is size, and the other is number. The length of the hair is determined by the rate of excretion and length of the period of activity of the hair follicles, but the fineness is determined by the number of follicles in unit area. Now analogy is never a safe guide, but I think if we had before us the results of really critical experiments on the genetics of size and number of multiple organs in any animal or even any plant, we might not wholly be at a loss in dealing with this important problem.

A somewhat similar question comes from South Africa. Is it possible to combine the qualities of a strain of ostriches which has extra long plumes with those of another strain which has its plumes extra lustrous? I have not been able fully to satisfy myself upon what the luster depends, but I incline to think it is an expression of fineness of fiber, which again is probably a consequence of the smallness and increased number of the excreting cells, somewhat as the fineness of wool is a consequence of the increased number and smallness of the excreting follicles.

Again the question arises in regard to flax, how should a strain be bred which shall combine the maximum length with maximum fineness of fiber? The element of number comes in here, not merely with regard to the number of fibers in a stem, but also in two other considerations, first, that the plant should not tiller at the base, and, secondly, that the decussation of the flowering branches should be postponed to the highest possible level.

Now in this problem of the flax, and not impossibly in the others I have named, we have questions winch can in all likelihood be solved in a form which will be of general, if not of universal, application to a host of other cognate questions. By good luck the required type of flax may be struck at once, in which case it may be fixed by ordinary Mendelian analysis, but if the problem is investigated by accurate methods on a large scale, the results may show the way into some of those general problems of size and number which make a great part of the fundamental mystery of growth.

I see no reason why these things should remain inscrutable. There is indeed a little light already. We are well acquainted with a few examples in which the genetic behavior of these properties is fairly definite. We have examples in which, when two varieties differing in number of divisions are crossed, the lower number dominates—or, in other words, that the increased number is a consequence of the removal of a factor which prevents or inhibits particular divisions, so that th