PEAS AND BEANS 149 



Some of them were long and vigorous, while 

 others were extraordinarily dwarfed, some being 

 so stocky as to grow pods that almost immedi- 

 ately touched the ground and were obliged 

 to bend back like hairpins to find room for 

 growth. There were corresponding variations 

 in size, shape, and color of the leaves. 



All this suggests that the beans originally 

 hybridized were themselves of very mixed ances- 

 try, and that a large number of hereditary traits 

 that had been blended in them were permitted to 

 make themselves manifest through the recom- 

 bination and segregation of hereditary factors. 



The reader cannot fail to note a similarity 

 here between the results obtained and those that 

 were obtained when the Persian walnut and the 

 California black walnut were hybridized. There, 

 as in the case of the beans, the immediate off- 

 spring were of gigantic growth, but the progeny 

 in turn showed both giants and dwarfs. 



The interest of both cases (and of a number 

 of other allied ones that will be recalled) in 

 illustrating the Mendelian principle of the seg- 

 regation of recessive factors for size, leading to 

 the production of a race of dwarfs, will be 

 obvious. 



Another hybridizing experiment with the 

 beans, also undertaken in the early days of my 



