ON THE SUPPOSED INFLUENCE OF THE POLLEN. 279 



it may occasion many experiments to be made to prove that which I 

 conceive to have been already sufficiently proved ; and, consequently, 

 cause the useless expenditure of time and labour, which might be advan- 

 tageously employed in similar investigations upon other plants in the wide 

 and unexplored field which lies open to the experimental Horticulturist. 



The numerous varieties of strictly permanent habits of the pea, its 

 annual life, and the distinct character in form, size, and colour of many 

 of its varieties, induced me, many years ago, to select it for the purpose 

 of ascertaining, by a long course of experiments, the effects of intro- 

 ducing the pollen of one variety into the prepared blossoms of another. 

 My chief object in these experiments was to obtain such information as 

 would enable me to calculate the probable effects of similar operations 

 upon other species of plants ; and I believe it would not be easy to 

 suggest an experiment of cross breeding upon this plant, of which I 

 have not seen the result, through many successive generations. I shall, 

 therefore, proceed to give a concise account of some of these experi- 

 ments, or rather (as I wish not to occupy more than necessary of the 

 time of the Society), to state the results of a few of them, believing 

 that I shall be able to explain satisfactorily the cause of a coloured 

 variety of the pea having been apparently changed into a white variety, 

 by the immediate influence of the pollen in the experiment of Mr. Goss. 



When, in my experiments, the pollen of a gray pea was introduced 

 into the prepared blossoms of a white variety, no change whatever took 

 place in the form, or colour, or size of the seeds ; all were white, and 

 externally quite similar to others which had been produced by the 

 unmutilated blossoms of the same plant. But these when sown in the 

 following year uniformly afforded plants with coloured leaves and stems, 

 and purple flowers; and these produced gray peas only. When the 

 stamens of the plants which sprang from such gray peas were extracted, 

 and the pollen of a white variety, of permanent habits, was introduced, 

 the seeds produced were uniformly gray ; but many of these afforded 

 plants with perfectly green leaves and stems, and with white flowers, 

 succeeded, of course, by white seed. In these experiments, the coty- 

 ledons of all the varieties of peas employed or produced were yellow ; 

 and, consequently, the peas with white seed-coats retained their ordinary 

 colour, though they contained the plumules and cotyledons of coloured 

 pea plants. The cotyledons of the blue Prussian pea, which was the 

 subject of Mr. Goss's experiments, are, on the contrary, blue; and the 

 colour of these being perceptible through the semi-transparent seed- 

 coats, occasioned those to appear blue, though they are really white ; 



