10 
KOYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
III. Notes on some Changes and Variations in the Offspring ot 
Cross-fertilized Peas. By Thomas Laxton, Esq. 
SiisrcE the year 1858 I have been carrying on continued and suc- 
cessive courses of experiments in cross-fertilizing the cultivated 
varieties of the Pea, partly with a view to produce improved cha- 
racters, and partly for the purpose of noting the results of artificial 
impregnation on a genus of plants which, although not absolutely 
beyond the reach of accidental cross-fertilization, is, for most 
practical purposes, sufficiently free from it to make the changes 
produced by artificial impregnation approximately reliable, at all 
events more so than in the majority of genera. These experiments 
were carried on in ignorance of the extent to which the late Mr. 
T. A. Knight and others had worked upon the Pea some fifty 
years since, and the records of which, in the ' Transactions ' of 
this Society, I was only able to read a few months ago. I had 
not intended to have communicated the results of any of these 
experiments at present, as some of the larger courses commenced 
in 1866 are as yet not quite concluded ; but as the seeds of peas 
are liable, by keeping, to change colour, and as I am desirous of 
gaining some information respecting the origin of the cultivated 
varieties, I have been induced at once to send up for the in- 
spection of the Committee part of the seeds derived from a 
single experiment; amongst these seeds wall be observed some 
of several remarkable colours, including black, violet, purple- 
streaked and spotted, maple, grey, greenish, w^hite, and almost 
every intermediate tint, the varied colours being apparently pro- 
duced on the outer coat or envelope of the cotyledons only. 
The peas were selected, for their colours &c., from the third 
year's sowing in 1869 of the produce of a cross in 1866 of the 
early round white-seeded and white-flow^ered garden variety 
" Eingleader," which is about 2| feet in height, fertilized by the 
pollen of the common purple-flowered "Maple" Pea, which is 
taller than " Eingleader," and has slightly indented seeds. I 
effected impregnation by removing the antliers of the seed- 
bearer, and applying the pollen at an early stage. This cross 
produced a pod containing five round white peas, exactly like 
the ordinary " Ringleader" seeds. 
In 1867 I sowed these seeds, and all five produced tall purple- 
flowered purplish-stemmed plants ; and the seeds, with few ex- 
ceptions, had all maple or brownish-streaked envelopes of va- 
