Inheritance in the Higher Plants 91 



should. An example of this kind has arisen in connection 

 with the character under discussion. Among many thou- 

 sand non-starchy seeds that breed true after having been 

 extracted from a cross, one occasionally appears which is 

 semi-starchy and transmits this character. What is the 

 explanation of this phenomenon? The aberrant indi- 

 viduals are too few to support any theory of partial segre- 

 gation yet devised. Is it not more logical to believe that 

 the dominant character has been formed anew ? It may be 

 asked why, if a new character is formed, does it happen to 

 be the character with which we were previously dealing 

 rather than some other character? It might be answered 

 that other characters do sometimes arise. I believe, how- 

 ever, that a more satisfactory answer can be given. Proto- 

 plasm undoubtedly differs chemically in distinct species, 

 and various chemical compounds have individual tenden- 

 cies toward certain specific reactions. Each species of 

 organism may therefore have certain paths of least resist- 

 ance along which variations tend to go. In maize one path 

 appears to lead to the production of starch (Fig. 40). 



Many characters in the higher plants have been shown 

 to be inherited as simple monohybrids. Color has been 

 a favorite subject and its transmission in over thirty species 

 has been more or less clearly determined. The list of 

 structural characters investigated is also large. It includes 

 such different things as tallness and dwarfness (peas and 

 beans), hairiness and glabrousness (various species), beard- 

 less and bearded ears (wheat), much-serrated and little- 

 serrated leaves (nettles), two-celled fruit and many-celled 

 fruit (tomatoes). A criticism has sometimes been raised 

 that most of these characters are morphologically unim- 

 portant. In a measure this criticism is valid, yet there is 



