xin PLANT-BKEEDING 163 



thousand plants to be sure that his experiments 

 were not being spoiled by bees visiting the flowers 

 and carrying strange pollen ! 



From the two hundred and eighty-seven flowers 

 that he crossed Mendel got a great deal of seed. 

 This seed was very carefully sown, every grain of 

 it, in carefully marked beds. The plants raised in 

 this way were allowed to fertilise themselves, and 

 their seed again sown. This was repeated for four, 

 five, or six years, the peculiarities of the plants 

 raised each year being observed very carefully, and 

 an exact count kept of the numbers of different 

 kinds of plants. 



We cannot stop here to explain exactly the 

 results Mendel got, one or two points only can be 

 mentioned. Thus in the experiments of crossing 

 tall and short peas, he found that the hybrids, that 

 is the plants obtained by crossing, had all long 

 stems, longer even than that of the parent long- 

 stemmed plant. This is a very curious point. 

 But when their seeds were again sown, it was 

 found that in the next generation some of the 

 plants were short - stemmed, i.e. were like their 

 grandmothers, and others were long-stemmed like* 

 their parents. The proportionate number of short 

 and long stemmed plants was also always constant. 



There is no doubt that Mendel's experiments 

 are very important in connection with explaining 



