PLANT HYBRIDIZATION BEFORE MENDEL 107 



colored envelope." The violet seed-coat color is also reported as 

 having "appeared only incidentally, and in a like degree in the 

 produce of the maple-colored seeds." (4b, p. 11.) 



In the following year, 1869, the seeds of the different types 

 of the preceding year were again sown separately. The white- 

 seeded peas again produced only plants with white flowers and 

 round white seeds. Some of the colored seeds, which Laxton said 

 he had expected would produce purple-flowered plants, produced 

 plants with white flowers, and round, white seeds only (in other 

 words recessives). The majority of the colored seeds, however, 

 produced plants with purple flowers, and seeds "principally 

 marked with purple or grey, the maple or brown-streaked being 

 in the minority." {ib.^ p. 11.) 



It is stated that in some pods the seeds were all white, in others 



all black, and in a few all violet, and again that: 



". . . those plants which bore maple-colored seeds seemed the most 

 constant and fixed in character of the purple-flowered seedlings; and 

 the purplish and grey peas, being of intermediate characters, appeared 

 to vary most. The violet-colored seeds produced almost invariably pur- 

 plish, grey or maple peas, the clear, violet color only now and then ap- 

 pearing, either wholly in one pod, or a single pea or two in a pod." 

 The purple-flowered plants are stated to produce from the 1869 sowing, 

 seeds that were "either round or only partly indented," the plants vary- 

 ing as to height and time of maturity, {ib., p. 12.) 



Laxton also records the important fact that 



"in no case, however, does there seem to have been an intermediate- 

 colored flower ... I have never noticed a single tinted white flower 

 nor an indented white seed in either of the three years' produce." {ib., 

 p. 12.) 



The quantities of the different colors produced in the seeds of 



the 1869 plants, are reported as being, in order of their amounts, 



as follows : 



"First, white, about half; second, purplish, grey, and violet (inter- 

 mediate colors) about three-eighths ; third, maple, about one-eighth." 

 (p. 12.) 



True ratios are, of course, not derivable, on account of the 

 small numbers involved. Laxton's own conclusion as to the par- 

 ental types is as follows : 



That the white-flowered, white-seeded pea is "an original variety, well 

 fixed and distinct entirely from the maple, that the maple is a cross-bred 

 variety which has become somewhat permanent and would seem to in- 

 clude amongst its ancestors one or more bearing seeds either altogether 

 or partly violet- or purple-colored." {ib., p. 12.) 



