PLANT HYBRIDIZATION BEFORE MENDEL 103 



which would now be called the recessives, produced in turn only 

 blue seeds, while the white seeds, or dominants, "yielded some 

 pods with all white, and some with both blue and white peas 

 intermixed." Here, then, is the typical case of the segregation 

 from the heterozygotes of hybrid dominants, without of course 

 statistical data. 



Although Goss, in this experiment, undoubtedly made evident 

 the facts of dominance and segregation, he did not recognize them 

 as such, nor did he apparently, sow the seeds of his different 

 plants separately, or make counts as did Mendel, of the numbers 

 of seeds of the two colors found on each separate plant. Goss was 

 chiefly interested in the question of the possibility of the "new va- 

 riety" having superior value as an edible pea, and remarked that, 

 in case it possessed no superior merit, there might yet be "some- 

 thing in its history that will emit a ray of physiological light." 

 However, the "physiological light" did not appear until after the 

 rediscovery of Mendel's papers in 1900. The paper of John Goss 

 was read before the Horticultural Society, October 15, 1822. (i.) 



At the meeting of the 20th of August preceding, a communica- 

 tion was read on the same subject from Alexander Seton. Seton 

 had pollinated the flowers of the "Dwarf Imperial," a green- 

 seeded pea, with the pollen of a tall white-seeded variety. One 

 pod with four peas was produced, all of which were green, pos- 

 sibly the dominance of green cotyledon color over its absence 

 (white). The plants growing from the four peas (F^ seeds) were 

 intermediate in size between the two parents ; and the pods, on 

 ripening, 



". . , instead of their containing peas like those of either parent, or of 

 an appearance between the two, almost every one of them had some peas 

 of the full green color of the Dwarf Imperial, and others of the whitish 

 color of that with which it had been impregnated, mixed indiscrimi- 

 nately, and in undefined numbers ; they were all completely either of one 

 color or of the other, none of them Waving an intermediate tint." (5, 

 P- 237-) 



Here again are recorded the phenomena of dominance and of 

 segregation, but owing to the fact that the numbers of the seeds 

 were not counted, the results were not available for scientific 

 purposes, nor would they have aroused attention, any more 

 than those of Goss, except for Mendel's work later. 



