THE MENDELIAN THEORY.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 442, 24 February 1912, Page 3

THE MENDELIAN THEORY.

The Farmer and Stockbreeder, London, takse leave to doubt the soundness of the Mendelian "law" of hereditry, and it has the courage of its convictions. It has not quita settled down to the belief that in such an unstable thing as stock breeding, with the innumerable influences surrounding it, a commonlaw could be laid down. Mendel's beliefs, says the Farmer, were founded on his observations in garden sweet pea culture, where there is probably less variation than in most other forms of plant life, not to speak of the infinite variety of forms of animal life. The theory that certain potentialities may be attributed to the dominant and others to the excessive progeny is clearly out of keeping, according to this authority, with the results obtained in swede turnip crossing. Here the recessives produced extreme variation of a considerable period, whilat the dominant types were the first to show constancy and character. A swede turnip will never sport a white—i.e., the swede types will never sport more than half swede half white—but a white will sport in any way, these being recessive. This is an inversion of Mendel's theory. Again, in wheat growing plants should be constant in the third year, yet they are not, in the case of cereals, there appeared to be no governing law, for they behaved like