9

1

9

download/literature/watchtower/1911-16.pdf

/../literature/watchtower/1911/16/1911-16-1.html

THE JuLy 15, 1911 One of the most important lessons for the spiritual Is WATCH TOIVER (223-227) BRITISH VISITS OF BROTHER FRANK DRAPER raelite to learn is to look to the Lord for leading in all Hawiek, Scot.....Aug. 8, 9 Belfast, Ire...... Aug. 24, 25 of life’s affairs—never to attempt any undertaking, either Edinburgh, Seot.. ‘* 9,10 Dublin, Irc...... «¢ 26, 27 temporal or spiritual, without seeking to note the will of Kirkealdy, Scot.. ‘‘ 11 Birkenhead, Eng.. ‘‘ 29 the Lord concerning it. We are marching toward the anti- Dundee, Scot..... ‘* 12,13 Warrington, Eng. “ 30 typical Canaan and know that other experiences are due Perth, Scot...... ee 14 Macclesfield, Eng. ‘‘ 3i us and must be undergone ere we can inherit the promises. Uddingston, Seot. ‘‘ 15 Altrincham, Eng..Sept. 1 The lesson for us is prompt and thorough obedience to the Greenock, Scot... ‘ 16 Manchester, Eng.. ‘6 2, 3 Lord’s leadings without murmurings—with joyfulness; and Motherwell, Seot. ‘ 17 Oldham, Eng..... fe 4,008 this can be expected only on the part of those who have Rothesay, Scot... ‘‘ 18 Poulton, Eng.... ‘ 6 learned the lessons previously given them, and above all, Glasgow, Scot.... ‘ 19, 20 Preston, Eng..... “e 7 the lesson of faith—confidence in the Lord’s power and Ayr, Scot........ “e 21 Barnoldswick,Eng. ‘* 8 goodness and faithfulness. Barrow, Eng..... ee 22 Liverpool, Eng... ‘‘ 9, 10 Vou. XXXII BROOKLYN, N. Y., AUGUST 1, 1911 No. 15 VIEWS FROM THE WATCH TOWER “UNTO THE THIRD AND FOURTH GENERATION’’ Exodus 20:5; 34:7; Numbers 14:18; Deuteronomy 5:9. RADICAL CHANGE IN THE VIEWS OF SCIENTISTS CAUSED BY MENDEL’S EXPERIMENTS ‘“Why is it that a man of genius will not infrequently become the father or grandfather of perfect dunces? Why do a fair-haired husband and a fair-haired wife sometimes beget a dark-haired baby? Why are there such differences in size, appearance or intelligence between the children of the same, identical mates? “Tf we observe the so-called ‘vagaries of Nature’ in the plant and the animal world, we observe that the dwarf pea, sprung from tall ancestors, breeds true to dwarfness; that the progeny of a black and a white rabbit are in one case all black and in another all the wild gray color; that two white peas being crossed may give a purple flower; that two hairless plants may revert to the hairy form. ‘‘We used to call such phenomena ‘curious reversions.’ We believed first that through slow evolution certain characteristics of certain types had either become over-developed or obliterated, like the lizard’s third eye, the bat’s wings, the tadpole’s tail. “*We also believed that acquired characteristics, a love for music, a taste for strong beverages, would be transmitted to all of one’s descendants, ‘‘Now come the Mendelian experiments, proving apparently that heredity and evolution are mere dreams, that species are immutable and that Nature’s vagaries are merely Nature’s logical efforts to extricate the original type from the tangle of cross-breeds due to man’s tampering. ‘‘Hven should the far-famed ‘missing link’ show up in the wilds of Oceania, where it is strongly suspected of keeping itself in the strictest incog., we would no longer have to deplore our descent from a simian ancestor. “‘The man who gave a concrete form to such theories was an Austrian monk by the name of Mendel, born in 1822. The result of his biological experiments were embodied in a modest paper read hefore the natural history society of a little Austrian town, Brunn. He also wrote a few letters on the subject to the botanist Naegeli. “*Unfortunately, pamphlet and letters were written at a time when Darwin’s theories, as to the origin of species, had become the scientific fad of the day. And what chance had the modest old monk of being even noticed? He died inglorious in 1884, “‘Not until a few years ago did R. C. Punnett, an English scientist with an inquisitive turn of mind, look over Mendel’s records of experiments. So appalled was he by their importance that he published a book, christening the new theory ‘Mendelism.’ ‘*The world lent an indifferent ear to the new leitmotive; but by and by the Englishman dinned Mendelism into the consciousness of the scientific world. At the present day there is a big English magazine devoted to the new science and called ‘Mendelism.’ ‘*Let us now turn to Mendel’s own account of his experiments on plants and on animals. In one series of experiments he concentrated his attention on the height of certain plants. He first made crosses between giant peas and dwarf peas. It mattered not which was the pollen-producing and which the seed-bearing plant; in all cases tall peas resulted from the eross. For this reason Mendel called the tall pea ‘dominant,’ and the dwarf ‘recessive.’ “*The next step was to collect seeds of the new plant and to sow them in the following year. When this was done it was found that both tall and dwarf plants appeared in the offspring. Each individual was either frankly tall or frankly dwarf, and no intermediate appeared, the proportion of tall to dwarf being three to one. The following year seed from the dwarf peas gave only dwarfs; seed from the tall gave a large proportion of tall and a few dwarfs. ‘Tn the following year tall seed brought forth tall plants only, dwarf seed dwarf plants only. The reversion to the prototype was complete. In the process, however, the tall plant, the dominant, appeared three times as frequently as the recessive. ‘‘The experiment was tried with various animals, and it was found, first, that after several generations the individual reverted to the pure type of either the male or female ancestors, and, secondly, that one type was dominant—that is, produced many more individuals than the recessive type. ‘*Crossing colored and white mice produced in the long run pure colored and pure white, with a majority of colored; the Angora fur of some rabbits was found recessive to the normal short fur; the rose comb which occurs in certain breeds of poultry, such as Hamburgs or Wyandottes, hehaves as a dominant to the high serrated single comb of the Leghorns. ‘“Freakish cases in whieh one of the parents was in a markedly abnormal condition were considered, Japanese waltzing mice were crossed with normal mice. The ‘waltzers’ are driven to circle round sometimes for hours by a painful malformation of the labyrinth of the ear. After a couple of generations the crosses bred true to either the normal] mouse or to the ‘waltzer,’ the latter being recessive to the former. ‘Interesting experiments were made to ascertain whether crossing increased or diminished the resistance to disease. ‘“Some varietics of wheat are susceptible to the attacks of a fungus that causes ‘rust,’ some are immune. When ‘susceptible’ and ‘immune’ were crossed, every hybrid was susceptible to ‘rust.’ The following year the hyhrid hecame differentiated, the ‘rusty’ and ‘immune’ plants being in the apparently universal ratio of three to one. ‘We have, then, the explanation of facets which Darwin refused to consider as very important. He held that ‘freakish variations’ in the production of species would rapidly heeome swamped hy intererossing with the normal form. He considered that species had heen and were heing built up by the process of natural scleetion. As a mattcr of fact, no species is being built up, and deviations from the prototype are corrected in the course of three gencrations. “Before experiments can he made on human beings the Mendelian discovery can be applied practically to the improvement of animal brecds. We know for sure that in most cases a cross means greatly increased vigor for the progeny. Breeders, however, are very shy in making crosses for fear of breaking up and losing the desirable combination of charaeters found in the original strains. ““Mendel’s discovery may reassure them on this point. In three generations hreeders can reproduce the parental types with all the increased vigor resulting from a cross. We must also revise our conception of a ‘pure breed.’ Until recently we said that the criterion by which we could judge the purity of breed was the pedigree of the individual. Today we know that a plant or an animal can be pure breed, not only owing to its ancestry, but in spite of its ancestry. ‘* Where the problem hecomes fascinating, however, is where it touches the mooted question of heredity, and here again it upsets absolutely our previous notions. Man being the slowest breeding animal, observations are difficult, and only imperfect [4859]