Page:Mendel's principles of heredity; a defence.pdf/105

Rh approached, some the one and some the other, original stock, or they all incline more to one or the other side; while with others they remain perfectly like the hybrid and continue constant in their offspring. The hybrids of varieties behave like hybrids of species, but they possess greater variability of form and a more pronounced tendency to revert to the original type.

With regard to the form of the hybrids and their development, as a rule an agreement with the observations made in Pisum is unmistakable. It is otherwise with the exceptional cases cited. Gärtner confesses even that the exact determination whether a form bears a greater resemblance to one or to the other of the two original species often involved great difficulty, so much depending upon the subjective point of view of the observer. Another circumstance could, however, contribute to render the results fluctuating and uncertain, despite the most careful observation and differentiation; for the experiments plants were mostly used which rank as good species and are differentiated by a large number of characters. In addition to the sharply defined characters, where it is a question of greater or less similarity, those characters must also be taken into account which are often difficult to define in words, but yet suffice, as every plant specialist knows, to give the forms a strange appearance. If it be accepted that the development of hybrids follows the law which is valid for Pisum, the series in each separate experiment must embrace very many forms, since the number of the components, as is known, increases with the number of the differentiating characters in cubic ratio. With a relatively small number of experimental-plants the result therefore could only be approximately right, and in single cases might fluctuate considerably. If, for instance, the