126 A Defence of Mendel's 



He tells me that several highly bred varieties, selected with 

 every possible care, commonly throw a small but constant 

 proportion of poor and almost vetch-like plants, with short 

 pods and small round seeds, which are hoed out by experi- 

 enced men each year before ripening. Other high-class 

 varieties always, wherever grown, and when far from other 

 sorts, produce a small percentage of some one or more 

 definite " sports." Of these peculiar sports he has sent me 

 a collection of twelve, taken from as many standard varieties, 

 each "sport" being represented by eight seeds, which though 

 quite distinct from the type agree with each other in almost 

 all cases. 



In two cases, he tells me, these seed-sports sown 

 separately have been found to give plants identical with 

 the standard type and must therefore be regarded as sports 

 in seed characters only ; in other cases change of plant-type 

 is associated with the change of seed-type. 



In most standard varieties these definite sports are not 

 very common, but in a few they are common enough to 

 require continual removal by selection*. 



I hope before long to be able to give statistical details 



* It is interesting to see that in at least one case the same or 

 practically the same variety has been independently produced by 

 different raisers, as we now perceive, by the fortuitous combination 

 of similar allelomorphs. Button's Ringleader and Carter's First Crop 

 (and two others) are cases in point, and it is peculiarly instructive to 

 see that in the discussion of these varieties when they were new, one 

 of the points indicating their identity was taken to be the fact that 

 they produced the same "rogues." See Gard. Chron. 1865, pp. 482 and 

 603; 1866, p. 221; 1867, pp. 546 and 712. 



Rimpau quotes Blomeyer (Kultur der Landw. Nutzpflanzen, Leipzig, 

 1889, pp. 357 and 380) to the effect that jpurpZe-flowered plants with 

 wrinkled seeds may spring as direct sports from peas with white 

 flowers and round seeds. I have not seen a copy of Blomeyer's 

 work. Probably this "wrinkling" was "indentation." 



