The Making of Species 



called the character that appeared in the off- 

 spring dominant, and the character which was 

 suppressed, recessive. Thus when tall and short 

 varieties were crossed the offspring were all tall. 

 Hence Mendel said that tallness is a dominant 

 character, and shortness a recessive character. 

 Mendel then bred these crosses among them- 

 selves, and found that some of the offspring 

 resembled one grandparent as regards the char- 

 acter in question while some resembled the 

 other, and he found that those that showed the 

 dominant character were three times as numerous 

 as those that displayed the recessive character. 

 He further found that all those of the second 

 generation of crosses which displayed the re- 

 cessive character bred true ; that is to say, when 

 they were bred together all their descendants 

 exhibited this characteristic. The dominant 

 forms, however, did not all breed true ; some 

 of them produced descendants that showed 

 only this dominant character, others, when 

 crossed, gave rise to some forms having the 

 dominant character and some having the 

 recessive character. 



It is thus evident that organisms of totally 

 different ancestry may resemble one another in 

 external appearance. In other words, part of the 

 material from which an organism is developed 

 may lie dormant. 



From the above results Mendel inferred, in 

 142 



