No. 594] BLENDING AND MENDELIAN INHERITANCE 329 



modes of these three groups fall at 35, 44 and 54, respect- 

 ively, with frequencies of 15, 30 and 16, respectively. 

 Each group is separated from the next adjacent by a gap 

 (a class of frequency). The modes of the early and 

 late groups correspond closely with those of the uncrossed 

 early and late parent varieties, which in this season had 

 modes at 35 and 56, respectively. The third and largest 

 group has its mode almost exactly midway between the 

 modes of the early and late groups, with 8 intervening 

 classes below it and 9 above. It would be difficult to imag- 

 ine a finer example of a stable intermediate class produced 

 by hybridization. For it will be remembered that every 

 part of this population is stable, since it includes only 

 families shown by Hoshino's breeding tests to be reason- 

 ably constant, those which he actually pronounced ' 'con- 

 stant. ' ' From it, therefore, one would need only to choose 

 families of the desired flowering time, in order to have a 

 complete succession of varieties from very early to very 

 late. 



But it may be asked, is the middle group possibly an 

 1 'early intermediate" group of Hoshino's formula aaBB 

 separated from the later groups by a class of minimal (0) 

 frequency, as in the F 2 distribution? If so it should 

 contain very few red-flowering families, no more indeed 

 than the early group itself, since each would obtain red- 

 flowered families only by cross-overs. Inspection of 

 Table IV shows that this hypothesis is untenable. The 

 truly hybrid origin of the middle group is shown by the 

 large number of red-flowered or mixed families which it 

 contains. Nine out of 12 of the F 3 families which con- 

 tributed to the production of the middle group contained 

 red-flowered or mixed red and white families. The middle 

 F 4 group itself contained 90 white-flowered to 52 red- 

 flowered or mixed families, whereas the early group con- 

 tained 21 white: 4 red, and the late group contained only 

 red-flowered or mixed families. 



Hoshino observed that the flowering time of F t plants 

 was close to that of the late parent, being only 2 or 3 days 



