rame of mind. Mendel's law was
rediscovered {199} independently by three different botanists,
engaged in the study of plant hybrids--de Vries, Correns, and
Tschermak, in the year 1900. It remained, however, for a zoologist,
Bateson, two years later, to point out the full importance and the
wide applicability of the law. Since then the Mendelian discoveries
have attracted the attention of biologists generally.
[Footnote 15]

[Footnote 15: This paper was originally published in part in the
_Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences_, Vol.
xxxviii, No. 18, January, 1903. It may be found complete in
_Science_ for 25 September, 1903.]

Professor Bateson, whose book on Mendel's "Principles of Heredity" is
the best popular exposition in English of Mendel's work, says that an
exact determination of the laws of heredity will probably produce more
change in man's outlook upon the world and in his power over nature
than any other advance in natural knowledge that can be clearly
foreseen. No one has better opportunities of pursuing such work than
horticulturists and stockbreeders. They are daily witnesses of the
phenomena of heredity. Their success also depends largely on a
knowledge of its laws, and obviously every increase in that knowledge
is of direct and special importance to them.

After thus insisting on the theoretic and practical importance of the
subject, Professor Bateson says:--

As regards the Mendelian principles which it is the chief aim of
this introduction to present clearly before the reader, it may be
said that by the {200} application of those principles we are
enabled to reach and deal in a comprehensive manner with phenomena
of a fundamental nature, lying at the very root of all conceptions
not merely of the physiology of reproduction and heredity, but even
of the essential nature of living organisms; and I think that I use
no extravagant words when, in introducing Mendel's work to the
notice of the Royal Horticultural Society's Journal, I ventured to
declare that his experiments are worthy to rank with those which
laid the foundation of the atomic laws of chemistry.

Professor L. H. Bailey, who is the Director of the Horticultural
Department at Cornell University and the editor of the authoritative
_Encyclopedia of Horticulture_, was one of the first of recent
scientists to call attention to Mendel's work. It was, we believe,
because