COMPLICATIONS ARISING IN THE CROSS-BREEDING OF STOCKS, 143 
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT. 
In opening the Second Session of the Conference Mr. Bateson ‘said :— 
Before we begin the formal business I should like you to look at the 
three Antirrhinums I hold in my hand. There was some discussion this 
morning as to whether there was a whiter form than the one then 
shown. We have come to the conclusion that there is a full yellow 
form, a less yellow form (white with yellow lips), and a third form which 
is whiter still. I think Miss Wheldale says there is yet something 
whiter. But whether it is desirable to talk of one as being cream colour 
and the other as white is a question, and it is not until we have a 
physical terminology, as suggested by Sir Michael Foster, that we shall 
get out of these difficulties of accurate description. 
CERTAIN COMPLICATIONS ARISING IN THE CROSS- 
BREEDING OF STOCKS. 
By Miss E. R. Saunpers, F.R.H.S., of Newnham College, Cambridge. 
For a statistical investigation of the laws of inheritance, garden stocks 
offer particularly favourable material, for the forms in cultivation differ 
in respect of several characters which are sharply marked and easily 
determined, as, ¢.g., surface character (whether hoary or glabrous) and 
flower colour (whether due to coloured or uncoloured sap, and to coloured 
or uncoloured plastids). The method of cross-breeding has revealed many 
points of interest in regard to the inheritance of these characters, some of 
which it is the object of the present paper briefly to describe. 
Mendel’s idea that to study the inheritance of each character separately 
was the most likely means of advancing our knowledge of heredity served 
him as a guiding principle in his now well-known experiments with peas. 
By a fortunate circumstance his choice fell upon an extremely simple 
case—a case in which the alternative characters (allelomorphs) are 
determined by a single factor which was present in one of the two forms 
crossed together and absent in the other, the relation of the two being 
that of dominant to recessive; in which, further, each several factor 
behaved independently of the others. From the results obtained with 
peas the correctness of the supposition and the value of the method were 
at once apparent. But it was soon evident that all cases could not be 
fitted into a simple scheme based upon the presence or absence of so 
many independent factors. In some cases the results of cross-breeding 
are extremely complex, and in stocks we have an excellent illustration of 
a case of this kind. Here the complicated inter-relations existing between 
the several factors determining the flower colour and surface character 
often lead to curious results, requiring careful analysis for their 
elucidation. | 
