No. 4.] GABDEN SEEDS. 47 



which it was grown, and is made up of the balanced sum of 

 different tendencies, potentialities and limitations of develop- 

 ment inherited in differing and varying degrees from each of 

 its ancestors back for an indefinite number of generations, 

 plus more or less influence from climatic and other conditions 

 affecting the development of the seed-producing plant. Gen- 

 erally the influence of the immediate parent or seed-produc- 

 ing plant is the most dominant, but not always, its relative 

 dominance being influenced in several ways, one of the most 

 important being the degree to which the character of the 

 producing plant is in accordance with the general character 

 of those of preceding generations. Practically all the seed 

 of a plant which is in every respect exactly like all of its 

 ancestors for many generations will develop into plants like 

 that which produced it, while only a small proportion of those 

 produced by a plant which is materially different from its 

 ancestors will be like the producing plant ; but if the ma- 

 jority of its ancestors were alike, the majority of the seeds 

 produced will be like them rather than the plant, while the 

 remainder of them are apt to assume a great variety of 

 forms. These conditions account for the fact that seed of 

 selected plants of marked and exceptional excellence gener- 

 ally fail to produce plants like the seed parent, but are apt 

 to give those like the run of those of earlier generations, to- 

 gether with some wide departure from it ; and also make it 

 clear that, for the production of seed all of which can be 

 depended upon to produce plants of any exact type, we must 

 have plants which are not only of that type, but which have 

 descended for the greatest possible number of generations 

 from plants of precisely the same type. 



There are, however, other facts which should be consid- 

 ered. One is that, while tendency towards any distinctive 

 characteristic of the producing plant or of that of any pre- 

 vious ancestor may be overcome by that of the general run 

 of influence and become dormant, yet it is not destroyed, but 

 may crop out in any subsequent generation ; and when it 

 does so there is apt to be a wide variation from the general 

 type and in many directions. This tendency to crop out, 

 though never entirely obliterated, grows weaker and weaker 



