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first actual demonstration of the equivalent value of both germinal particles as regards their influence on transmission inheritance in future generations. It is only by simplifying the problem so that all disturbing factors could be eliminated that Mendel succeeded in making this demonstration. Too many qualities have hitherto been considered with consequent confusion as to the results obtained. It is of the genius of the man that he should have been able to succeed in seeing the problem in simple terms while it is apparently so complex, and thus obtain results that are as far-reaching as the problem they solve is basic in its character. Bateson, in his work Mendel's _Principles of Heredity_, says:-- It may seem surprising that a work of such importance should so long have failed to find recognition and to become current in the world of science. It is true that the Journal in which it appeared is scarce, but this circumstance has seldom long delayed general recognition. The cause is unquestionably to be found in that neglect of the experimental study of the problem of species which supervened on the general acceptance of the Darwinian doctrine. The problem of species, as Koelreuter, Gaertner, Naudin, Wichura, and the hybridists of the middle of the nineteenth century conceived it, attracted thenceforth no workers. {220} The question, it was imagined, had been answered and the debate ended. No one felt much interest in the matter. A host of other lines of work was suddenly opened up, and in 1865 the more original investigators naturally found these new methods of research more attractive than the tedious observations of hybridizers, whose inquiries were supposed, moreover, to have led to no definite results. In 1868 appeared the first edition of Darwin's _Animals and Plants_, marking the very zenith of these studies with regard to hybrids and the questions in heredity which they illustrate, and thenceforth the decline in the experimental investigation of evolution and the problem of species have been studied. With the rediscovery and confirmation of Mendel's work by de Vries, Correns and Tschermak in 1900 a new era begins. Had Mendel's work come into the hands of Darwin it is not too much to say that the history of the development of evolutionary philosophy would have been very different from that which we have witnessed. That Mendel's work, appe
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