THE FULLEST POPULAR ACCOUNT OF MENDEL'S DISCOVERY

DARBISHIRE, A.D.

Breeding and the Mendelian Discovery. With Illustrations on Colour and Black-and-White.

London, N.Y. etc., 1911. 8vo. Orig. full blue cloth w. gilt lettering to front board and spine. Corners a bit bumped and spine a bit crooked. Inner hinge weak and splitting, but a nice and clean copy. Library stamps. XII, 282 pp. + 34 plates, 3 of which are folded (4 in colour). Many figures and diagrams in the text.

The important first edition of Darbishire's exposition of Mendelev's theory of heredety and the practise of breeding. The work constitutes the fullest popular account of Mendel's discovery until that time.

"... I have given a fuller account of the phenomena observed by Mendelev than has yet appeared in popular form: the seven pairs of characters studied by him are all figured for the first time, and other results of his are illustrated by photographs from specimens which I have bred myself." (Preface p. (III) ).
The work is of importance, as it spread the discovery of Mendel, the importance and meaning of which had only recently been discovered. Many Physiologists, genetics and biochemists got acquainted with the discveries of Mendel through this work. For instance John Burdon Sanderson Haldane (1892-1964), one of the founders of population genetics, primarily learned about the discovery of Mendel through Darbishire's work. "In 1901 his (Haldane's) interest in genetics was aroused by a lecture on the recently rediscovered work of Gregor Mendel; it was increased in 1910, when he began to study the laws of inheritance as revealed by his sister's 300 guinea pigs. Reading an early paper by A.D. Darbishire, Haldane noted what appeared to be the first example of gene linkage in vertebrets..." (D.S.B. p. 21).

Order-nr.: 35876