MODERN BIOLOGY 591 



stant, while the remaining red flowers repeated the above-mentioned colour 

 ratio. 



Dominant and recessive characters 

 The explanation that Mendel gave of this strange phenomenon was as in- 

 genious as the observation itself; the fact that the flowers of the first hybrid 

 generation are red and acquire no intermediate colour between red and white 

 he accounts for by the red colour's being dominant over the white, which 

 latter character he calls recessive. In the succeeding generation both domi- 

 nant and recessive characters again appear; transitional characters cannot be 

 observed. From this he concluded that in the sexual cells, or gametes, there 

 exists no fusion of characters; in the hybrid red-white exist potentialities 

 for red and white side by side in the male and the female cells; when these 

 are united, the fusion must thus take place in accordance with one out of 

 four possibilities: red-red, red-white, white-red, white-white. This explains 

 the proportion between the offspring's qualities; the two single-coloured 

 combinations no longer vary, but remain constant, while those with the 

 double characters are capable of repeating the same four possibilities so long 

 as they exist. The same system of law-bound heredity was shown by all 

 the characters that Mendel investigated in various plant species. He after- 

 wards took up experiments with the crossing of bees, which, as is well 

 known, produce many different racial types, but, disappointed over the lack 

 of encouragement that he received as a result of his investigations into plants, 

 he did not publish the results of this subsequent research-work, and they 

 have now been lost to us. During his own lifetime Mendel's achievements 

 attracted no attention whatever; Nageli, as we have seen, found them ir- 

 reconcilable with his own theories, and the other botanists displayed utter 

 indifference. It was not until the turn of the century that Mendel's remark- 

 able results were rediscovered in connexion with the hybrid research-work 

 that was then being carried out. Three observers — de Vries, Correns, and 

 TscHERMAK — simultaneously pointed out the agreement between Mendel's 

 observations and their own results. Thenceforward Mendel's name has been 

 one of the best-known in biology; even among the general public his fame 

 has in more recent times competed with that of Darwin himself. Much sur- 

 prise has been expressed over the fact that Mendel's brilliant observations 

 did not attract greater attention, and the blame has been laid upon the un- 

 known journal in which they were published. One might with greater justi- 

 fication ask oneself whether any of the more important publications of the 

 time would have undertaken to print results of research so utterly at vari- 

 ance with the prevailing conception of biology. We have only to remember 

 that Mendel denies variability in those characters that he observed, whereas 

 all the biologists were just at the time seeking after variations as material in 



