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RISERS \«rie» AND NATIONALAgricultural Sta.• . ♦ * * . »THE YEAR 1902has passed.into history as one. remarkable for big things.. Some . the things are so big and so fundamental to the life of the people as to work a practical revolution. December 21 last when Marconi succeeded in sending an aerograph three thousand miles across old ocean without the aid of any medium whatsoever, he worked a revolution not only in the matter of intercommunication of nations separated by vast distances, hut in the thought of man and in the direction in which science must move in future—a revolution so far-reaching as to make the possible achievements of the future so far surpass what has been accomplished in the past, as to render the latter insignificant, save as it was the preparation and precursor of the better time to be!* * *And within the year there has come to the knowledge of the agricultural world a law, the operation of which is as regular and as true as the movement of the heavenly bodies, a discovery as fundamental to agricultural development, so it is said, as the Marconi system of wireless telegraphy Is to its particular sphere, and one which is to give to soil culture and plant breeding a new dignity among the sciences, a new strength as a safe enterprise and such intellectual attractiveness and delight as never . before it has possessed. Nearly forty years ago a German abbot named Gregor Mendel discovered the law under whose operation desirable types positively may be fixed by breeding in plants of all kinds. He not only discovered the fact of the existence of such a law, but he discovered the workings of that law, and wrote a book in which that law was expoundedand its workings elucidated.* * *Like many of the 'world’s great treasures, that book was laid away on dusty shelves amid forgotten lore. Mendel died, but he had left the world a priceless heritage. It was an Englishman who discovered Mendel’s book; he read its pages with delight, experimented along the lines laid down by its author, and proved the correctness of the conclusions reached by Mendel. Naming the discovery “Mendel’s Law,” he has proclaimed to the world the extraordinary results which it makes possible. Up to this time breeding of plants has been largely “guesswork” because we have not known how to fix desirable qualities in the things bred. Mendel’s law points the way to certain results, we are assured, and from this day forth breeding of plants and improvement of seeds, must move along lines harmonious to this immutable law, if most perfect results are to be secured. The breeder who does follow this law will have the certain assurance that the results are to be just what he seeks, and he may be confident that the type he desires to produce will he a fixed type, with the tendency to revert, now common to all bred seeds and plants, eliminated. Think what that means to agricultural progress in the future! As one well-known scientist put it the other day: “We shall make greater progress in plant breeding in five years under the Mendel law than could possibly be accomplished in a hundred years without it.”* * *But we do not have to leave the record of 1902 as it appears in facts and figures to realize what a stupendous year it has been in the history of American agriculture. The accompanying table, which shows the acreage, production and value of the principal farm crops of the United States for the year, graphically illustrates the importance of the position of agriculture in the great world’s affairs.
Newspaper Details
Chicago Farmers Voice
Chicago, Illinois, US
Sat, Jan 10, 1903
Page 2
Full Page
Clipped by
Aliyah S.
USA 12 Apr 2023
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