12 
EOTAL IIOETICULTUEAL SOCIETY. 
purplish, grey, or maple peas, the clear violet colour only now 
and then appearing, either wholly in one pod or on a single pea 
or two in a pod. All the seeds of the purple-flowered plants were 
again either round or only partially indented ; and the plants 
varied as to height and earliness. In no case, however, does 
there seem to have been an intermediate-coloured flower; for 
although in some flowers I thought I found the purple of a lighter 
shade, I believe this was owing to light, temperature, or other cir- 
cumstances, and applied equally to the parent maple. I have 
never noticed a single tinted white flower nor an indented white 
seed in either of the three years' produce. The whole produce 
of the third sowing consisted of seeds of the colours and in the 
approximate quantities in order as follows, viz. : — 1st, white, 
about half ; 2nd, purplish, grey, and violet (intermediate colours), 
about three-eighths ; and, 3rd, maple, about one-eighth. 
From the above I gather that the w^hite-flowered white-seeded 
pea is (if I may use the term) an original variety well fixed and 
distinct entirely from the maple, that the two do not thoroughly 
intermingle (for whenever the white flower crops out, the plants 
and its parts all appear to follow exactly the characters of the 
white pea), and that the maple is a cross-bred variety which has 
become somewhat permanent and would seem to include amongst 
its ancestors one or more bearing seeds either altogether or partly 
violet- or purple-coloured ; for although this colour does not appear 
on the seed of the " maple," it is very potent in the variety, and 
appears in many parts of the plant and its ofi"spring from cross- 
fertilized flowers, sometimes on the external surface or at the 
sutures of the pods of the latter, at others on the seeds and stems, 
and very frequently on the seeds ; and whenever it shows itself 
on any part of the plant, the flowers are invariably purple. My 
deductions have been confirmed by intercrosses eff'ected between 
the various white-, blue-, some singularly brightgreen-seeded peas 
which I have selected, and the maple- and purple-podded and the 
purple-flowered sugar-peas, and by reversing those crosses. I 
have also deduced from my experiments, m accordance with the 
conclusions of the late Mr. Knight and others; that the colours of 
the envelopes of the seeds of peas immediately resulting from 
a cross are never changed. I find, however, that the colour 
and, probably, the substance of the cotyledons are sometimes, but 
not always, changed by the cross fertilization of two diff"erent va- 
rieties ; and I do not agree with Mr. Knight that the form and 
