Overview

PROF. WILSON has prepared an exposition of Mendelism which will be of special interest to stock-breeders and serious students of agriculture. It is a model of clearness and directness, and bears the marks of the teacher as well as of the investigator. After explaining Mendel's experiments, his rule and his theory, the author passes to a discussion of various disturbing causes which account for abnormal distributions of characters. Thus there are cases in which the effects of the individual factors cannot be identified separately; cases of the suppression of the effect of one factor by that of another; cases of incomplete or absent dominance; cases where a factor is believed to combine indifferently with more than one other; cases where two or more factors seem to be linked together so that they are handed on from generation to generation as one; and cases in which two different factors produce a similar effect. These are some of the reasons for results which are not typically Mendelian, and they might have been added to. Thus it has been convincingly shown by Morgan and others that environmental and developmental influences may have a profound effect on the outcome of Mendelian factor-differences. Prof. Wilson goes on to illustrate the improvements which have rewarded careful experimentation, e.g. as regards yield of wheat and of milk. That Mendelian formulae can be used towards an increased production of material wealth has been proved by the results of workers like Nilsson-Ehle and Pearl, and these are but indications of what might be achieved. The average yield of wheat in Britain is about 32 bushels to the acre; it might be raised to 40 or even 50 bushels. For every day by which the life of a variety of wheat is shortened between seed-time and harvest, the wheat-growing area in Canada reaches fifty or sixty miles farther northwards. The work done in Denmark shows how the wealth of Britain, so far as it proceeds from dairy cattle, might be very nearly doubled. Those who wish to know how such exceedingly desirable results can be attained will be well advised if they study a book like Prof. Wilson's. It will show them how they may act with circumspection and foresight. The book would have been the better for pictures and its terse style is perhaps a trifle severe, but it is a book for the times, competently and carefully executed, which those whom it especially concerns should run to read. - Nature, Volume 98 [1917]

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