122 PLANT HYBRIDIZATION BEFORE MENDEL 



a hybrid there will be a complete or partial fusion of the parental 

 characters, that: 



"This fusion of characters may take place in certain cases ; but it has 

 appeared to me that, in general, things did not take place in this way," 

 and again : "It has appeared to me that, in general, the resemblance of 

 the hybrid to its two ascendants consisted, not in an intimate fusion of 

 the diverse characters peculiar to each one of them in particular, but 

 rather in a distribution, equal, or unequal, of the same characters." 

 (5, p. 302.) 



Here we meet, for the first time in the literature of hybridiza- 

 tion, the phrase "distribution of characters" now so familiar. 

 "These facts," Sageret remarks, "have been confirmed by a mul- 

 titude of my experiments." 



It is evident, from the following statement, that Sageret ap- 

 praised his discovery of the dominance of characters in crossing 

 at its proper value : 



"The ideas which I present," he says, "have appeared remarkable to 

 me ; they seem to me to be of a very great importance." (5, p. 302.) 



In addition to his melon crosses, Sageret secured a hybrid be- 

 tween a black radish and a cabbage, of which he writes : 



"Some of the fruits, instead of being intermediate, were like either 

 cabbage or radish on the same inflorescence." (5, p. 297.) 



Each silique bore a single seed, analogous to its pod, to which 

 he makes reference in a further comment upon "the distribution 

 among hybrids of the characters of their ascendants without 

 fusion of these characters" (5, p. 304) — a point of view with 

 regard to the results of hybridization that needs little to make it 

 modern. 



It is a matter of additional interest that Sageret was further 

 able to derive a natural scientific conclusion from the facts of 

 unit-character inheritance as he found them, with respect to the 

 reappearance of old or the appearance of new "species." 



The hybrids "often reproduced for me," he says, "varieties 

 which had long ago disappeared." (5» p. 304-) 



He finally concludes : 



"To what, then, does this faculty belong, which nature has of repro- 

 ducing upon the descendants such or such a character, which had be- 

 longed to their ancestors? We do not know: we are able, however, to 

 suspect that it depends upon a type, upon a primitive mould, which 

 contains the germ which sleeps and awakens, which develops or not 

 according to circumstances, and possibly that which we call a new 



