24 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVIII. No. i 



College, Cardiff, lias been appointed to suc- 

 ceed Professor C. Lapworth, F.E.S., who re- 

 tires at the close of the present year. 



Professor Abderhalden goes to Vienna as 

 the successor of Professor Ludwig, to take 

 charge of the Institute for Medical Chemistry. 



A CHAIR of exotic pathology has been estab- 

 lished at the College de France. The assembly 

 of the professors of the college has submitted 

 for the choice of the ministry, Dr. ISTattan- 

 Larrier as their first choice and Dr. Tanon as 

 their second choice for this chair. 



DISCUSSION AND COBBESPONDENCE 



SOME FACTS CONCERNING MENDELISM 



In the American Breeders' Magazine, No. 1, 

 Vol. 6, there is a short sketch of the life of 

 Thomas Andrew Knight. Attention is drawn 

 to the fact that Mr. Knight gave to the Hor- 

 ticultural Society of London, in 1823, the re- 

 sults of some experiments that he had carried 

 on in cross breeding peas. Following this 

 statement Mr. Knight's reason for using peas 

 is given, and it is remarked as peculiar that 

 he was using the same plants, as Mendel later 

 did, in breeding experiments and discussing 

 these experiments a year after Mendel was 

 born. Consulting the original paper of Mr. 

 Knight's in the proceedings of the Horticul- 

 tural Society for 1823, a reference was found 

 to another paper in the same volume of pro- 

 ceedings which was written in 1822, the year 

 Mendel was born. The author of this second 

 paper was Mr. John Goss. It seems that Mr. 

 Goss had been cross breeding the Prolific Blue 

 pea and a dwarf pea and had obtained some 

 results which he thought worthy of publicity. 



In part the article of Mr. Goss is as follows : 



In the summer of 1820 I deprived some blooms 

 of the Prolific Blue of their stamina and the next 

 day applied the pollen of a dwarf pea, of which 

 impregnation I obtained three pods of seed. In 

 the following spring when these were opened, in 

 order to sow the seed, I found to my great sur- 

 prise, that the color of the peas instead of being 

 deep blue, lite their female parent, was of a 

 yellowish white, like the male. Toward the end 

 of the summer I was equally surprised to find 



that these white seeds had produced some pods 

 with all blue, some with all white, and many with 

 both blue and white peas in the same pod. 



Last spring I separated all the blue peas from 

 the white, and sowed each color in separate rows; 

 and I now find that the blue produces only blue, 

 while the white seeds yield some pods with all 

 white, and some with both blue and white peas 

 intermixed. 



It would seem from the above that Mr. Goss 

 had a great law within his hands, but because 

 of the fact that the first three pods of seeds 

 seemed to show direct effect of pollen he lost 

 sight of the very thing that was later stated 

 as a law, and continued his paper as a 

 discussion of direct effect of pollen in the first 

 impregnation. 



Following immediately the paper of Mr. 

 Goss's in the proceedings is a note by the 

 secretary of the society referring to a com- 

 munication of one Alexander Seton, Esq., 

 which was read before the Society on August 

 20, 1822. It seems that Mr. Seton made a 

 similar experiment to that of Mr. Goss, with 

 the following results : Mr. Seton impregnated 

 the Dwarf Imperial, a green variety of pea, 

 with the pollen of a white, free-growing va- 

 riety. From this pollination he obtained only 

 one pod, which contained four peas, and which 

 did not differ in appearance from the others 

 of the female parent. The plants that grew 

 from these four peas seemed to partake of the 

 nature of both parents, being taller and more 

 profuse than the Dwarf Imperial and less so 

 than the male white parent, and the pods 

 resembled those of the former, being short and 

 having but few peas in each pod. On their 

 ripening it was found that instead of their 

 containing peas like those of either parent or 

 of an appearance between the two, almost 

 every one of them had some peas of the full 

 green color of the Dwarf Imperial and others 

 of the whitish color of the other parent. They 

 were, however, found in undefined numbers in 

 the pods, and all of the peas were completely 

 of one color or the other, with none having an 

 intermediate tint, as Mr. Seton had expected. 

 Accompanying these two papers and opposite 

 page 273 of volume 5 of the transactions of 

 the Horticultural Society of London, pub- 



