IN THE VEGETABLE GARDEN 



this blossom grows, with a label naming the va- 

 riety used as the pollen parent, and preserve the 

 seeds for planting next season. 



Some of the most interesting and important 

 plant experiments have been made with the gar- 

 den pea in this way, notably the celebrated ex- 

 periments of the Austrian monk, Mendel, which 

 led to his discovery that some characters are 

 " dominant " and others " recessive " in heredity, 

 and that the recessive characters reappear in a 

 certain number of the progeny of the second gen- 

 eration. 



Mendel found, for example, that if a pea grown 

 on a tall vine was hybridized with one grown on 

 a short vine, the progeny of the first generation 

 would all be tall, tallness of vine being " dom- 

 inant. " But the recessive trait of shortness, al- 

 though submerged in the hybrid of the first gen- 

 eration, will appear in one individual in four of 

 the offspring of the second generation. It is obvi- 

 ous that the fact that the flowers are self -fertilized 

 simplifies the experiment, insuring that the hy- 

 brids shall be inbred, and preventing the intro- 

 duction of new hereditary strains that might com- 

 plicate the results. 



Some of Mr. Burbank's earliest experiments 

 were made with different varieties of beans. For 

 example, he hybridized two varieties of bean, 

 one of which produced a crimson pod with red 

 beans and the other a crimson-and-white-striped 

 pod with red-and-white-striped seed. Curiously 

 enough, the hybrid beans were jet black in color, 



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