LUTHER BURBANK 



of the traits of the parents without clear dom- 

 inance of one quality over another. 



But even where these qualities are blended in 

 the first generation, there is likely to be a segre- 

 gation and redistribution along Mendelian lines 

 in the second generation, giving rise to the phe- 

 nomenon which breeders have been accustomed 

 to speak of as reversion in one direction or the 

 other toward the parental types. So you will do 

 well to be on the lookout for the phenomena of 

 Mendelian heredity in the second generation, even 

 where you fail to find clear evidence of the dom- 

 inance of a character in the first hybrid genera- 

 tion. 



If, for example, you were to cross an orange 

 poppy and a white one, as Mr. Burbank once did, 

 securing only crimson-flowered progeny, you could 

 carry the experiment forward another generation 

 with full confidence that there would be interesting 

 color revelations, enabling you perhaps to ana- 

 lyze the component colors of the original parents 

 in the second generation. In this particular case 

 it is not unlikely that the original orange and 

 white flowers contained blended pigments per- 

 haps red and yellow in one case, and yellow and 

 blue in the other and the breaking up and re- 

 distribution of these hereditary factors through 

 cross-breeding might prepare the way for the 

 bringing out of hidden colors, leading ultimately, 

 perhaps, to the production of a blue poppy. 



This illustration gives us a clew to yet another 

 important aspect of our problem of plant breed- 



[166] 



