Page:Mendel's principles of heredity; a defence.pdf/98

78 medium size, and were flecked and splashed similarly to those of ''Ph. multiflorus'', while the ground colour was not materially different. The next year forty-four plants were raised from these seeds, of which only thirty-one reached the flowering stage. The characters of ''Ph. nanus'', which had been altogether latent in the hybrids, reappeared in various combinations; their ratio, however, with relation to the dominant characters was necessarily very fluctuating owing to the small number of trial plants. With certain characters, as in those of the axis and the form of pod, it was, however, as in the case of Pisum, almost exactly 1 ∶ 3.

Insignificant as the results of this experiment may be as regards the determination of the relative numbers in which the various forms appeared, it presents, on the other hand, the phenomenon of a remarkable change of colour in the flowers and seed of the hybrids. In Pisum it is known that the characters of the flower- and seed-colour present themselves unchanged in the first and further generations, and that the offspring of the hybrids display exclusively the one or the other of the characters of the original stocks. It is otherwise in the experiment we are considering. The white flowers and the seed-colour of ''Ph. nanus appeared, it is true, at once in the first generation [from'' the hybrids] in one fairly fertile example, but the remaining thirty plants developed flower colours which were of various grades of purple-red to pale violet. The colouring of the seed-coat was no less varied than that of the flowers. No