THE 



AMERICAN NATURALIST 



Vol. XLIV February, 1.910 No. 518 



A MENDELIAN INTERPRETATION OF VARIA- 

 TION THAT IS APPARENTLY 

 CONTINUOUS 1 



PROFESSOR EDWARD M. EAST 

 Harvard University 



There are two objects in writing this paper. One is to 

 present some new facts of inheritance obtained from pedi- 

 gree cultures of maize; the other is to discuss the hy- 

 potheses to which an extension of this class of facts 

 naturally leads. This discussion is to be regarded simply 

 as a suggestion toward a working hypothesis, for the facts 

 are not sufficient to support a theory. They do, however, 

 impose certain limitations upon speculation which should 

 receive careful consideration. 



The facts which are submitted have to do with inde- 

 pendent allelomorphic pairs which cause the formation of 

 like or similar characters in the zygote. Nilsson-Ehle 2 

 has just published facts of the same character obtained 

 from cultures of oats and of wheat. My own work is 

 largely supplementary to his, but it had been given these 

 interpretations previous to the publication of his paper. 



In brief, Nilsson-Ehle 's results are as follows: He 

 found that while in most varieties of oats with black 



1 Contributions from the Laboratory of Genetics, Bussey Institution, Har- 



