Mendel’s Experiments 
In such cases the offspring display some paternal 
characters and some maternal ones, and some 
characters in which the maternal and paternal 
peculiarities are blended. An example of in- 
heritance of this description is furnished by a 
cross between the golden and the amherst 
pheasants. 
VI. The offspring may be quite unlike either 
parent. For example, Cuénot found that some- 
times a grey mouse when crossed with an albino 
produces black offspring. 
The first two kinds of inheritance were care- 
fully investigated by Gregor Johann Mendel, 
Abbot of Brunn. The results of his experiments 
were published in the Proceedings of the Natural 
History Society of Brunn, in 1854, but attracted 
very little notice at the time. 
Mendel experimented with peas, of which many 
varieties exist. He took a number of varieties, 
or sub-species, which differed from one another 
in well-defined characters, such as the colour of 
the seed coat, the length of the stem, etc. He 
made crosses between the various varieties, being 
careful to investigate one character only at a 
time. He found that the offspring of such 
crosses resembled, in that particular character, 
one only of the parents, the other parent ap- 
parently exerting no influence on it. Mendel 
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