The Making of Species 
called the character that appeared in the off- 
spring dominant, and the character which was 
suppressed, recessive. Thus when tall and short 
varieties were crossed the offspring were all tall. 
Hence Mendel said that tallness is a dominant 
character, and shortness a recessive character. 
Mendel then bred these crosses among ‘them- 
selves, and found that some of the offspring 
resembled one grandparent as regards the char- 
acter in question while some resembled the 
other, and he found that those that showed the 
dominant character were three times as numerous 
as those that displayed the recessive character. 
He further found that all those of the second 
generation of crosses which displayed the re- 
cessive character bred true; that is to say, when 
they were bred together all their descendants 
exhibited this characteristic. The dominant 
forms, however, did not all breed true; some 
of them produced descendants that showed 
only this dominant character, others, when 
crossed, gave rise to some forms having the 
dominant character and some having the 
recessive character. 
It is thus evident that organisms of totally 
different ancestry may resemble one another in 
external appearance. In other words, part of the 
material from which an organism is developed 
may lie dormant. 
From the above results Mendel inferred, in 
142 
