Principles of Heredity 189 



expect, then, this Telephone to be if not a pure-bred green 

 pea from time immemorial at least as pure-bred as other 

 green peas which do not exhibit dominance of green at all ? 

 Now, what is Telephone ? Do not let us ask too much. 

 Ancestry takes a lot of proving. We would not reject him 

 " parce qu'il navait que soixante & onze quartiers, <& que le 

 reste de son arbre genealogique avait ete perdu par I' injure 

 du terns" 



But with stupefaction we learn from Professor Weldon 

 himself that Telephone is the very variety which he takes 

 as his type of a permanent and incorrigible mongrel, a 

 character it thoroughly deserves. 



From Telephone he made his colour scale ! Tschermak 

 declares the cotyledons to be "yellowish or whitish green, 

 often entirely bright yellow*." So little is it a thorough- 

 bred green pea, that it cannot always keep its own self- 

 fertilised offspring green. Not only is this pea a parti- 

 coloured mongrel, but Professor Weldon himself quotes 

 Culverwell that as late as 1882 both Telegraph and 

 Telephone " will always come from one sort, more especially 

 from the green variety " ; and again regarding a supposed 

 good sample of Telegraph that " Strange to say, although 

 the peas were taken from one lot, those sown in January 

 produced a great proportion of the light variety known as 

 Telephone. These were of every shade of light green up to 

 white, and could have been shown for either variety," Gard. 

 Chron. 1882 (2), p. 150. This is the variety whose green, 

 it is suggested, partially " dominates " over the yellow of 

 Pols d? Auvergne, a yellow variety which has a clear lineage 

 of about a century, and probably more. If, therefore, the 

 facts regarding Telephone have any bearing on the signi- 



* " Speicliergewebe gelblich oder weisslicli griin, manchmal auch 

 vollstfindig hellgelb." Tschermak (36), p. 480. 



