View this paper (a scan of the original)

This is the published version of a talk presented by Bateson to the Royal Horticultural Society on 8 May 1900, nine months after the 1899 London Hybrid Conference described in the previous commentary. The printed version was published sometime after 31 October in 1900.

This paper is celebrated for introducing Mendel to the English-speaking world.

Early in the published version, Bateson asks

“How far have we got towards an exact knowledge of heredity, and how can we get further?”

In answer to the first question, he mentions Galton’s (1897a, 1897b) analysis of inheritance of coat colours in Basset Hound dogs, classified by breeders as “tri-colour” and “non-tricolour”, in which Galton had shown that the data were consistent with his (Galton’s) law of ancestral contributions (also known as the law of ancestral heredity), namely that the total heritage of an offspring comprises, on average, ½ from the combined contribution of the two parents, ¼ from the combined contribution of the four grandparents, and so on. Bateson, however, notes that there are many examples of heredity that are not consistent with Galton’s law. The first example Bateson mentions is that “The offspring of a Polled Angus cow and the Shorthorn bull is almost invariably polled”.

Bateson then immediately notes that “quite recently additions to our knowledge of these questions have been made”, referring specifically to two papers by Professor de Vries, published “in the present year”, namely de Vries (1900a, 1900b). Bateson then moves straight on to mention that de Vries refers to a:

“remarkable memoir by Gregor Mendel, giving the results of his [Mendel’s] experiments in crossing varieties of Pisum sativum. These experiments of Mendel's were carried out on a large scale, his account of them is excellent and complete, and the principles which he was able to deduce from them will certainly play a conspicuous part in all future discussions of evolutionary problems. It is not a little remarkable that Mendel's work should have escaped notice, and been so long forgotten.”

Bateson then devotes the rest of his paper to describing Mendel’s results and their implications, concluding

“That we are in the presence of a new principle of the highest importance is, I think, manifest”.

The somewhat dramatic background to this paper, as related by Bateson’s wife in a memoir published after his death (Bateson, B. 1928), is that “He [Bateson] had already prepared this paper, but in the train on his way to town [from Cambridge to London] to deliver it, he read Mendel's actual paper on peas for the first time. As a lecturer he was always cautious, suggesting rather than affirming his own convictions. So ready was he however for the simple Mendelian law that he at once incorporated it into his lecture”.

As appealing as this account is, there is strong evidence against it. For example, Olby (1987) has shown that an eye-witness summary of Bateson’s lecture (Anon., 1900), published just 4 days after the lecture had been presented, has Bateson talking about Galton’s law (as in the published paper), but then mentioning only the first of de Vries’ 1900 papers (1900a) and making no mention of Mendel at all! Noting that de Vries’ first 1900 paper actually makes no mention of Mendel, and considering other supporting evidence, Olby (1987) concludes that if Bateson read any paper for the first time on the train to London, it was de Vries’ first 1900 paper (the one that does not mention Mendel). Then, soon after returning to Cambridge, Bateson read de Vries’ second 1900 paper (the one that does mention Mendel), which led him to then read Mendel’s paper (which was then available in the Cambridge University library, but has since been lost, presumably stolen!) in time to include it as a centrepiece in the published version of his lecture, which appeared no earlier than 31 October 1900 (the date of an addendum inserted by Bateson). This scenario is supported by the fact that Bateson’s published paper also cites the 1900 “re-discovery” papers of Correns and von Tschermak, both of which were not published until after Bateson’s lecture, but in time to be included in the published paper.

Bateson ends this paper by saying:

“there is no doubt we are beginning to get new lights of a most valuable kind on the nature of heredity and the laws which it obeys. It is to be hoped that these indications will be at once followed up by independent workers. Enough has been said to show how necessary it is that the subjects of experiment should be chosen in such a way as to bring the laws of heredity to a real test. For this purpose the first essential is that the differentiating characters should be few, and that all avoidable complications should be got rid of. Each experiment should be reduced to its simplest possible limits.”

As we shall see in following commentaries, Bateson and many others did just that.

References

Anon. (1900) Lecture [summary of the lecture given by W. Bateson to the Royal Horticultural Society on 8 May 1900]. The Gardeners Chronicle Issue 698: 398. View this report

Bateson, B. (1928) William Bateson, Naturalist: His Essays and Addresses, Together With a Short Account of his Life. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. View this book

Correns, C. (1900) G. Mendels Regel Über das Verhalten der Nachkommenschaft der Rassenbastarde. Berichte der Deutschen Botanischen Gesellschaft 18: 158-168. View an English translation

de Vries, H. (1900a) Sur la loi de disjonction des hybrides. Comptes Rendus de l'Academie des Sciences (Paris) 130: 845-847. View an English translation

de Vries, H. (1900b) Das Spaltungsgesetz der Bastarde (Vorlaufige Mittheilung). Berichte der Deutschen Botanischen Gesellschaft 18: 83-90. View this paper

Galton, F. (1897a) The average contribution of each several ancestor to the total heritage of the offspring. Proceedings of the Royal Society 61: 401-413. View this paper

Galton, F. (1897b) A new law of heredity. Nature 56: 235-237. View this paper

Olby, R. (1987) William Bateson's Introduction of Mendelism to England: A Reassessment. British Journal for the History of Science 20: 399-420. View this paper

von Tschermak, E. (1900) Über Künstliche Kreuzung bei Pisum sativum. Berichte der Deutsche Botanischen Gesellschaft 18: 232-239. View an English translation