Abstract
WE have reached contemporary developments. The study of variation, and indeed of several branches of what we now call genetics, especially cross breeding, had been pursued with vigour in the 'sixties and 'seventies, but had totally lapsed. Renewal of those inquiries led at once to an advance. We saw that the received ideas as to the magnitude of variations, and especially as to the interrelations of the domesticated breeds, were largely erroneous. As in regard to the incidence of sterility in interspecific crosses, so in regard to variation, we found ourselves among an intricate mass of empirical observations, obeying none of the principles which the orthodoxy of the time presupposed. The incidence of variation was utterly capricious, and was determined neither by utility, nor the antiquity of the feature, nor by the conditions of life, nor by any other ascertainable circumstance.
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References
Artbildung u. Verwandschaft bei den Schmetterlingen, ii. 1895, p. 3.
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BATESON, W. Progress in Biology. Nature 113, 681–682 (1924). https://doi.org/10.1038/113681a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/113681a0