SEGREGATION AND DOMINANCE 145 



of view of heredity as consisting of a large number 

 of independent heritable unit characters. 



b. Dominance. In the germplasm there are cer- 

 tain determiners of unit characters which dominate 

 others during the development of the somatoplasm. 

 In other words, they determine the apparent charac- 

 ter of the organism by causing that character to 

 become visible. 



The alternative recessive characters, although they 

 may be present in the germplasm, are unable to be- 

 come manifest in the somatoplasm so long as the 

 dominant characters are present. When, however, a 

 dominant character is absent, its recessive alterna- 

 tive becomes manifest. 



c. Segregation. Unit characters, although they 

 may be intimately associated together in the indi- 

 vidual, during the complicated process of maturation 

 that always precedes the formation of a new indi- 

 vidual, separate or segregate out as if independent 

 of each other and thus are enabled to unite into 

 new combinations. 



