Phenomena of Inheritance 97 



the dominant characters is ABCDEFG ; of one having all of the 

 recessive characters abcdefg. When two such plants are crossed 

 the zygotic formula of the hybrid is AaBbCcDdEcFfGg, and 

 since the dominant and recessive characters (or rather determin- 

 ers of characters) represented by these seven pairs of letters 

 separate in the formation of the gametes; and since each separate 

 determiner may be associated with either member of the six 

 other pairs, the number of possible combinations of these deter- 

 miners in the gametes is (2)* or 128. That is, in this case 128 

 kinds of germ cells may be produced, each having a different in- 

 heritance formula ; and since each of these 128 kinds of male germ 

 cells may unite with any one of the 128 kinds of female germ cells 

 the number of combinations of these characters which are pos- 

 sible in the F 2 generation is (i28) 2 or 16,384, while the number 

 of different genotypes is (3) 7 or 2187. Every one of these more 

 than two thousand genotypes may be represented by various com- 

 binations of the letters ABCDEFG and abcdefg. 



When many characters are concerned it is difficult to remember 

 what each letter stands for, and consequently it is customary in 

 such cases to designate characters by the initial letter in the name 

 of that character. By this form of shorthand one can show in a 

 graphic way the possible segregations and combinations of heredi- 

 tary units in gametes and zygotes through successive generations, 

 and as a result many modern works on Mendelian inheritance look 

 like pages of algebraic formulae. 



4. Presence and Absence Hypothesis. Mendel spoke of the 

 presence of contrasting . or differentiating characters in the plants 

 which he crossed, such as round or wrinkled seeds, tall or short 

 stems, etc. Many others have regarded these contrasting charac- 

 ters as due to the presence or absence of single factors: thus 

 round seeds are due to the presence of a factor for roundness 

 (A) while wrinkled seeds were said to be clue to the absence of 

 that factor (a). Round seeds were spoken of as wrinkled seeds 

 plus the factor for roundness. But it is practically certain that 



