INHERITED SEED-CHARACTERS 55 



grows from within tlie withered petals. When the 

 pod is dry and ripe, which is not likely to be much 

 earlier than the beginning of August, it is opened, 

 the seeds are taken out, and sown in the following 

 spring. All the seeds will produce tall plants, tallness 

 being dominant over dwarfness. The result would 

 have been the same if the flower of a tall plant had 

 been pollinated with pollen from the flower of a 

 dwarf one. The point is that the result of a cross 

 made, say, in the summer of 1910 is not seen until 

 the spring of 1911 in the cases of tallness and dwarf- 

 ness. And the result of a cross between a grey- 

 seeded pea (or, more strictly, a pea-plant which 

 produces grey seed-coats) and a white-seeded pea 

 (i.e. a pea-plant which produces white seed-coats) 

 made in the summer of 1910 will not be seen till 

 the autumn of 1911. 



But if, in the summer of 1910, pollen is taken 

 from the flower of a plant, the first two leaves or 

 cotyledons of which were yellow, and placed on the 

 pistil of the flower of a plant which had green 

 cotyledons, the result of the cross is seen when the 

 pod which develops from the latter flower is opened. 

 For instead of the pod containing " green seeds " 

 (as all the other pods of the plant will, if no other 

 crosses have been made on the plant), it will contain 

 yellow ones, because the first two leaves of the 

 plants of the jBjst hybrid generation will be yellow, 

 inasmuch as yellowTiess in the cotyledons is dominant 

 over greenness. That is to say, whilst the result 

 of a cross made in the summer of 1910 between a 



