134 THE ORCHID REVIEW. [Sept.-Ocr., 191y- 
of such “careful observers as Kélreuter, Gartner, Herbert, Lecoq, Wichura, 
and others,” he expressed his conviction that among all the numerous 
experiments made, not one had been “ carried out to such an extent and in 
such a way as to make it possible to determine the number of different forms 
under which the offspring of hybrids appear, or to arrange these forms with 
certainty according to their separate g generations, or definitely to ascertain 
their statistical relations.” This blank he attempted to fill by a set of 
experiments with garden peas, the results of which were published in a 
classical paper which appeared in 1866, but which, curiously enough, passed 
almost unnoticed for a period of over thirty years. 
Mendel was a clear thinker. He realised that in hybrid unions both 
similar and diverse parental characters were brought together, and that so 
far as the latter were concerned some compromise had to be effected. He 
emphasised the essential difference between stable and variable hybrids ; 
those in which the differences were entirely and permanently accommodated 
together, and those in which the arrangement between the conflicting 
elements was only temporary, and he pointed out the increasing complexity 
when a greater number of diverse elements were brought together. All this 
is clear from his remark that “since in the habit of the hybrid plant no 
changes are perceptible during the whole period of vegetation, we must 
assume that it is only possible for the differentiating elements to liberate 
themselves from tbe enforced union when the fertilising cells are developed. 
In the formation of these cells all existing elements participate in an 
entirely free and equal arrangement, ‘by which it is only the differentiating 
ones which mutually separate themselves.” Mendel further alluded to 
Girtner’s successful attempts to transform one species into another by 
continued hybridisation ; all of which suggests that his attention was drawn 
to the subject by controversies then current as to the stability of species: 
His results, shora of all technicalities, were the discovery of incompatibility 
and segregation of the diverse elements united by intercrossing. 
Curiously enough, Mendel’s. discovery of hybrid segregation was 
anticipated by over forty years by three Englishmen, working in- 
dependently with the same subjects, namely, garden peas. On Oct. 15th, 
1822, a paper by Mr. John Goss, was read before the Horticultural Society 
of London, entitled, ‘ Variation in the Colour of Cross Impregnated Peas.” 
In the summer of 1820 Mr. Goss deprived some blossoms of the Prolific 
Blue pea of their stamens, and the next day applied the pollen of a dwar 
pea of the white-seeded group. Three pods were obtained, and when 
opened, Mr. Goss remarks, “in order to sow the seed, I found, to my great 
_° Surprise, that the colour of the peas, instead of-being a deep blue, like their 
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