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