LUTHER BURBANK 



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. 



Some of them were long and vigorous, while 

 others were extraordinarily dwarfed, some being 

 so stocky as to grow pods that almost immediately 

 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 recombina- 

 tion 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 Cali- 

 fornia black walnut were hybridized. There, as 

 in the case of the beans, the immediate offspring 

 were of gigantic growth, but their 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 illustrat- 

 ing the Mendelian principle of the segregation of 

 recessive factors for size, leading to the produc- 

 tion of a race of dwarfs, will be obvious. 



[100] 



