MENDEL'S LAW OF HEREDITY

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LIII, Issue LIII, 25 May 1908, Page 3

MENDEL'S LAW OF HEREDITY

Dr. Hizendorfs ex-presidential address at tRe annual meeting of the Philosophical Institute, in Christchurch dealt with Mendel's law of heredity. He pointed out in' New Zealand there was being conducted ,the largest experiment in Mendelism which had yet taken place in any part of 'the world. It was well fenown that the aim and object of the Canterbury farmer was to get a lamb which "would w-eigh 421b when it was four months old. Very many farmers did, with a five months' old lamb, and fcEey were well satisfied with it. The lamb which was found to have those characteristics was a cross between a half-bred and a Southdown, The half-breds had to be produced by mating merinos with English Leiceaters, and an attempt had Seen made to in-breed" the half-breds so as to fix the half-bred characters, end so far had that gone that the new half-breds had been given a special name and called Corriedales. There were many scores of thousands of , Corriedales in Canterbury, so that witE 60 much in4>Teedin>g of half-breds there should beavailable a large amount of information relating to the operation of Mendel's law. He had sought for such information, but did not get it. Most of the Corriedale stock were started a large number of years ago, and the originators of those flocks were not quite sure *what happened at that time, and they were not pa/rticuarly 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 which supported Mendel's law, he got some which allowed'one to estimate how very difficult it would be to breed any variety by following the law. The most of the sheep were obviously not one "unit character, but probably twenty, and, therefore, it would be decidedly difficult to build up a variety by combining so many characters as those. Pfill, the law was of very considerable importance, and in some cases it had been found that varieties could Be originated which bore the good qualities oF both original varieties, and the law itself was of considerable interest and importance to one's conception of biology.