MENDEL'S EXPERIMENTS 3 



The two members of each of these seven pairs were then 

 crossed with each other : reciprocal crosses being made 

 in all cases. That is to say : plants having round 

 seeds were crossed with others having wrinkled, some- 

 times the one kind being the male parent, sometimes 

 the other ; and so on for the remaining pairs. 



When grown, the hybrids were found to be like one 

 of their parents only. Those between parents having 

 round seeds and others having wrinkled had round 

 seeds only ; those between parents having long stems 

 and others having short had long stems only ; and so 

 on. The differing character borne by the second parent 

 had, in all cases, disappeared. By way of designation, 

 Mendel called the parental character transmitted to the 

 hybrid the dominant, that which had disappeared the 

 recessive. Thus, in pea seeds, the round character is the 

 dominant while the wrinkled is the recessive ; in stems, 

 the long character is the dominant while the short is 

 the recessive. The following table, in which the 

 characters found to be dominant are printed in capitals 

 and placed in the first column, gives the number of 

 parent plants crossed and the number of successful 

 fertilizations in each of the seven pairs : 



Successful 

 fertili- 

 zations 



1. ROUND seeds x wrinkled 15 60 



2. YELLOW albumen x green 10 58 



3. COLOURED seed-coat x white 10 35 



4. PLAIN pods X constricted 10 40 



5. GREEN unripe pods x yellow 5 23 



6. AXIAL flowers x terminal 10 34 



7. LONG stems x short 10 37 



Plants 

 crossed 



