Table of Contents

List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
1: The elusive law
2: The fleeces of Spain
3: Sheep breeding sets new standards
4: Bakewell's new system
5: Bakewell becomes a celebrity
6: Merinos in Sweden, France and Great Britain
7: Merinos in German-speaking countries and Australia
8: Ferdinand Geisslern, the Moravian Bakewell
9: From breeding principles to genetic laws
10: The sheep breeders' legacy to Mendel
Overview
References
Index

Reviews

This is a very valuable book analysing the period of animal breeding, especially sheep, before the discovering of heredity laws by Gregor Mendel. Folia Mendeliana Historians of technology will find here a rich case study of the diffusion of a technology, and the book's implications for the relations of science and technology are significant. British Journal for the History of Science In illuminating the milieu in which Mendel worked, Wood and Orel add usefully to our knowledge of nineteenth-century conceptions of heredity. British Journal for the History of Science Over the last 30 years Orel and Wood have reconstructured the context of Mendel's work more thoroughly than anyone else. This book is a welcome culmination of that project, integrating the various strands of their work into one long argument. British Journal for the History of Science Wood and Orel's book offers answers both intriguing and persuasive. British Journal for the History of Science Historians of genetics will find Wood and Orel's case compelling. Journal of the History of Biology ... an interesting and a stimulating study. They have undertaken an impressive amount of research in the archives on sheep-breeding in Europe in the eighteenth and ninteenth centuries, and presented their findings and conclusions clearly and logically. I learnt a lot from the book. Nature