506 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [ANNO \7QQ. 



of common parentage; and, as I am unable to discover any source of inaccuracy in 

 this experiment, I must believe this to have happened. 



Another species of superfcetation, if I have justly applied that term to a process 

 in which 1 seed appears to have been the offspring of 2 males, has occurred to me 

 so often, as to remove all possibility of doubt as to its existence. In 1797, the 

 year after I had seen the result of the last-mentioned experiment, having prepared 

 a great many white blossoms, I introduced the farina of a white and that of a gray 

 pea, nearly at the same moment, into each ; and as, in the last year the character 

 of the coloured male had prevailed, I used its farina more sparingly than that of 

 the white one; and now almost every pod afforded plants of different colours. The 

 majority however were white; but the characters of the 2 kinds were not sufficiently 

 distinct to allow me to judge with precision, whether any of the seeds produced 

 were of common parentage or not. In the last year, I was more fortunate: having 

 prepared blossoms of the little early frame pea, I introduced its own farina, and 

 immediately afterwards that of a very large and late gray kind, and I sowed the 

 seeds thus obtained in the end of the last summer. Many of them retained the 

 colour and character of the small early pea, not in the slightest degree altered, and 

 blossomed before they were 18 inches high; while others, taken from the same 

 pods, whose colour was changed, grew to the height of more than 4 feet, and 

 were killed by the frost, before any blossoms appeared. It is evident, that in the&e 

 instances superfcetation took place; and it is equally evident, that the seeds were 

 not all of common parentage. Should subsequent experience evince, that a single 

 plant may be the offspring of 2 males, the analogy between animal and vegetable 

 nature may induce some curious conjecture, relative to the process of generation 

 in the animal world. 



In the course of the preceding experiments, I could never observe that the cha- 

 racter, either of the male or female, in this plant, at all preponderated in the offspring; 

 but, as this point appeared interesting, I made a few trials to ascertain it. And, as 

 the foregoing observations had occurred in experiments made principally to obtain 

 new and improved varieties of the pea, for garden culture, I chose, for a similar 

 purpose, the more hardy varieties usually sown in the fields. By introducing the 

 farina of the largest and most luxuriant kinds into the blossoms of the most dimi- 

 nutive, and by reversing this process, I found that the powers of the male and 

 female, in their effects on the offspring, are exactly equal. The vigour of the 

 growth, the size of the seeds produced, and the season of maturity, were the 

 same, though the one was a very early, and the other a late variety. I had, in this 

 experiment, a striking instance of the stimulative effects of crossing the breeds; 

 for the smallest variety, whose height rarely exceeded 2 feet, was increased to 6 

 feet; while the height of the large and luxuriant kind was very little diminished. 

 By this process it is evident, that any number of new varieties may be obtained; 

 and it is highly probable, that many of these will be found better calculated to cor- 



