MENDEL'S LAW OF HEREDITY.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 194, 11 May 1908, Page 9

MENDEL'S LAW OF HEREDITY.

. SHEEP BREEDING EXPERIMENTS, (by telegraph.—special correspondent.) ' Chrlstcliurch, May 9. .. Dr. Hizendorf's ex-presidsntinl address at the annual meeting of the Philosophical Institute doalt with law of heredity. Ho pointed out that that in ■ Neiv Zealand there was being conducted tho largest experiment in Mendelism which had yet taken place in any part of the world. It was well known.that the aim and object of the Can- ! terbury farmer was to get a lamb which would weigh 421b. when it was four months old. Very many farmers did not succeed, but a good many did with a five months' old lamb, and they /were , very well satisfied with it. The lamb which was found to have, those characteristics was. a cross between a ■ halfbred and a Southdown. The half-breds had to be produced by mating merinos with English Leicesters,, and an; attempt had been made to in-breed. the . half-breds so to fix the half-bred characters, and so : far had {■hat gone that the new half-breds had been given a special namo and called' Corriedales. There were many scores of .thousands of Corriedales in Canterbury,, so that with somuch in-breeding of half-breds thero, should, be available a largo amount of information relating to Ythe: : operation' of. Mendel's law. Ho''.had. sought for such information, but did not'get it. Most of the Coi-riedale flocks were, started, a .largo; number-of; years ago', and. the orginators of those-'flocks'■ were not quite sure what' happened: at that time, and they were not particularly interested in the way'horns appeared-among the offspring. _or the proportion in'which the, various qualities appeared. Although he did not get any information -"vvliich supported Mendel's law, he got some which allowed one to estimate how very difficult it would bo to breed any variety ; by following tho law. The Inost of the sheep were obviously not one unit character,. but probably twenty, and, therefore,' it wiuld be dccidedly difficult to build up a variety by combining so many characters as, those! Still, tho law wa3 of very considerable importance, and'in some cases'it had, ■been found, that varieties could bo originated which qualities of both original ' vane ! £ieir'^nd v thd'naw'Mtself _Vas of; considerable.interest and importance in one's conception of; biology. .