Page:Mendel's principles of heredity; a defence.pdf/72

52 subsequent development, and consequently the results [of the reciprocal crosses] can be reckoned together in each experiment. The relative numbers which were obtained for each pair of differentiating characters are as follows:

Expt. 1.Form of seed.—From 253 hybrids 7,324 seeds were obtained in the second trial year. Among them were 5,474 round or roundish ones and 1,850 angular wrinkled Therefrom the ratio 2⋅96 to 1 is deduced.

Expt. 2.Colour of albumen.—258 plants yielded 8,023 seeds, 6,022 yellow, and 2,001 green; their ratio, therefore, is as 3·01 to 1.

In these two experiments each pod yielded usually both kinds of seed. In well-developed pods which contained on the average six to nine seeds, it often occurred that all the seeds were round (Expt. 1) or all yellow (Expt. 2); on the other hand there were never observed more than five angular or five green ones in one pod. It appears to make no difference whether the pods are developed early or later in the hybrid or whether they spring from the main axis or from a lateral one. In some few plants only a few seeds developed in the first formed pods, and these possessed exclusively one of the two characters, but in the subsequently developed pods the normal proportions were maintained nevertheless.

As in separate pods, so did the distribution of the characters vary in separate plants. By way of illustration the first ten individuals from both series of experiments may serve.