148 LUTHER BURBANK 



crimson and white striped pod, with red and 

 white striped seed, and no trace of blackness. 



Here, it will be seen, there was no such sharp 

 differentiation of the color factors for pod or 

 seed into opposing pairs, with dominance in one 

 and recessiveness in the other, as was shown by 

 the peas in Mendel's experiments. On the con- 

 trary, the union of red beans with red and white 

 striped ones produced something totally unlike 

 either — namely, a jet black bean. 



But in the succeeding generation the offspring 

 of the black bean showed a breaking up into new 

 groups of characters suggestive of Mendelian 

 heredity. Some of them were black, some red, 

 some speckled, and some white. There were 

 corresponding variations also as to size and shape 

 of the beans, some being large and some small, 

 some round and some flat. And there was 

 marked diversity in time of ripening. 



As to the vines themselves, the original hybrid 

 showed the enhanced vitality that commonly 

 characterizes the offspring of rather widely sep- 

 arated parents. The original first generation 

 vine (which bore the black beans) grew to 

 enormous size, outstripping either parent by 

 eight or ten feet, and rivaling the growth of a 

 hop vine. The vines of the second generation 

 were as diversified as the seed. 



