212 Rhodora [NovemBer 
of fertility, which though not as great as in many violet hybrids, was 
yet in some plants sufficient to make the evidence ambiguous. Atten- 
tion will be here restricted to the two points of color difference, in which 
Mendelian dominance is plainly manifest. 
In the hybrid from the wild the capsules are a reddish purple, like 
those of V. hirsutula. The tendency to produce the green capsules 
of the other parent is however present, for it appears in some of the 
offspring; but in the mother hybrid it is overpowered by the conflict- 
ing tendency to produce purple capsules. In Mendel’s language, the 
purple color is ‘dominant,’ the green color ‘recessive.’ In like man- 
ner it appears that the brown seed-color of V. papilionacea is domi- 
nant over the buff seed-color of V. hirsutula. Mendel represented 
dominant characters by capital letters, recessive characters by the 
corresponding small letters. Following his practice, we may let A 
stand for the purple capsule-color, and a for the green capsule-color; 
B for the brown seed-color, and b for the buff seed-color. One par- 
ent, V. hirsutula, will then be marked as A.b; the other, V. papilio- 
nacea, as aB; and the hybrid resulting from their sexual union as 
Aa.Bb. 
The plants from the wild are presumed to have been the immediate 
result of the crossing of the two species, — what are technically known 
as F,’s. It may well be that they are removed one or more generations 
from the original cross; but this is not of especial importance in the 
present experiment, as it will be seen that these particular plants, so 
far at least as respects the two color qualities under investigation, are 
hybrids of exactly the same status as ‘first crosses.’ 
From the close-fertilized seeds of these plants I raised in 1906 11 
offspring, F,’s; and in 1907, 10 offspring; in all, 21. Among these all 
the four Mendelian forms were found to occur, in number and char- 
acter as follows: 
10 plants had purple capsules and brown seeds, apparently A.B. 
E. [21 [23 [11 [11 oe buff [21 “ce AbD. 
oM * . green E " brown “ i a.B. 
4 [11 ce oe ce [23 buff ce a.b. 
A close approximation to the theoretically required ratio of *9:3:3:1" 
is to be expected only when there are several hundred individuals; but 
even in the small number here shown there is a decided plurality of 
A.B's. 
The different forms of these capsules and their seeds are shown in 
