ON CHANGES AND VAEIATIONS IN CROSS-FERTILIZED PEAS. 11 
rious shades ; the remainder had entirely violet or deep purple- 
coloured envelopes : in shape the peas were partly indented; but 
a few were round. Some of tbe plants ripened off earlier than the 
" Maple," which, in comparison with " Eingleader," is a late 
variety ; and although the pods were in many instances partially 
abortive, the produce was very large. 
In 1868 I sowed the peas of the preceding year's growth, and 
selected various plants for earliness, productiveness, &c. Some of 
tbe plants had light-coloured stems and leaves ; these all showed 
white flowers, and produced round white seeds. Others had 
purple flowers, showed the purple on the stems and at the axils 
of tlie stipules, and produced seeds with maple, grey, purple- 
streaked or mottled, and a few only, again, with violet-coloured en- 
velopes. Some of the seeds were round, and some partially in- 
dented. The pods on each plant, in the majority of instances, con- 
tained peas of like characters ; but in a few cases tbe peas in the 
same pod varied slightly, and in some instances a pod or two on 
the same plant contained seeds all distinct from the remainder. 
The white-flowered plants were generally dwarfish, of about the 
height of " Hingieader ;" but the coloured-flowered sorts varied 
altogether as to height, period of ripening, and colour and shape 
of seed. Those seeds with violet-coloured envelopes produced 
nearly all maple- or particoloured seeds, and only here and there 
one with a violet-coloured envelope ; that colour, again, appeared 
only incidentally, and in a like degree in the produce of the maple- 
coloured seeds. In 1869 the seeds of various selections of the 
previous year were again sown separately ; and the white-seeded 
peas again produced only plants with white flowers and round 
white seeds. Some of the coloured seeds, which I had expected 
would produce purple-flowered plants, produced plants with white 
flowers and round white seeds only ; the majority, however, 
brought plants with purple flowers and with seeds principally 
marked with purple or grey, the maple- or brown-streaked being 
in the minority. On some of the purple-flowered plants were 
again a few pods with peas difl'ering entirely from the remainder 
on the same plant. In some pods the seeds were all white, in 
others all black, and in a few, again, all violet ; but those plants 
which bore maple-coloured seeds seemed the most constant and 
fixed in character of the purple flowered seedlings, and the purplish 
and grey peas, being of intermediate characters, appeared to vary 
most. The violet-coloured seeds again produced almost invariably 
YOL. III. D 
