THE SUM OF HIS WORK 



the records of such hybridizing have been lost. His 

 essential experiments had to do -with garden peas 

 and with the manner of transmission of the minor 

 difference between varieties of these peas — tall- 

 ness versus shortness of stem, purpleness versus 

 whiteness of flower, yellowness versus greenness 

 of pod, and so on. 



But the peculiar manner in which these antago- 

 nistic pairs of qualities are given representation in 

 the offspring of parents having the opposite traits, 

 is precisely duplicated when the cross-fertilization 

 is similarly effected between allied species that 

 show corresponding diversities. 



In each case, the essential fact is that certain 

 minor characters or groups of characters tend to 

 assume prepotency or dominance in hybrids of the 

 first generation; and that both the dominant and 

 the submerged (or recessive) characters appear 

 in the hybrids of the second generation segregated 

 and variously recombined, so that where several 

 pairs of qualities are under consideration, the off- 

 spring of the second generation constitute a most 

 heterogeneous lot, in which the diversified traits 

 of their grandparents are mixed and blended and 

 mosaiced together in every conceivable combina- 

 tion. 



Not only were these essential facts clearly 

 revealed by my early hybridizing experiments, 



[195] 



