CONFORMITY TO TYPE 



243 



facts concerning flowers. Many of our most beautiful 

 garden flowers are hybrids, some of which were produced 

 only after infinite pains had been taken in their cultiva- 

 tion. If they are fertile and "go to seed," everyone 

 that has enjoyed a garden knows with what dismay 

 he views the plants growing from the hybrid seeds which 

 yield a few of the desired forms among a large number 



CZDR 



i o : i R 



FIG. 100. Schema of Mendel's law for a single pair of "antagonistic" proper- 

 ties: A, The results of hybridization of a pure dominant (D) with a pure 

 recessive (R) form; B, the results of crossing a hybrid with a recessive form 

 (50 per cent, of progeny pure recessive, 50 per cent, hybrid but apparently 

 dominant) ; C, the result of crossing a hybrid with a dominant form, all apparenty 

 dominant (but 50 per cent, pure, 50 hybrid). (Bateson.) 



of simple and commonplace flowers. Though this fact 

 was known in Mendel's time, and it was generally con- 

 ceded that hybrids "tended to revert to the primitive 

 types," he alone had the genius to follow the matter with 

 scientific accuracy, to reduce the reversion to a mathe- 

 matical basis, and to lay the foundation of a new 



