In 1913 the Development Commission invited the cooperation of the University of Edinburgh in formulating plans for an Animal Breeding Institute and a committee to consider ways and means soon began to function. War necessitated the postponement of the project but the echoes of the last shot had hardly died when, on a very humble scale, the Animal Breeding Research Department came into being in 1920 with Dr. F. A. E. Crew, then an assistant in the Department of Natural History, as director and complete staff. The original cramped quarters in High School Yards were soon outgrown and in 1924 the Department moved to seven rooms in the new chemistry building at the foot of Blackford Hill, where adjacent land and outbuildings permitted a more extensive programme of work than had previously been possible. Here the institute was rapidly outgrowing its accommodations when, in 1927, the International Education Board of the Rockefeller Foundation came to its aid with a conditional offer of $150,000 for the endowment of a Chair of Genetics at the University and the construction of a building to house the department, together with equipment therefor.