246 Mendel's Laws of Alternative Inheritance in Peas 
new variety, and in 1879 a controversy arose as to the reality of the distinction 
between the two. The Editor of the Gardeners Chronicle (1879, p. 210) says, 
"It is clear that what Messrs Carter and Co. are sending out as Telephone is 
"the most wrinkled seed selected from Telegraph," and later in the same year 
(August 2nd, p. 146) the Editor describes seeds sown at his direction in order 
to test the identity uf the two races. Among the seeds sown are three samples of 
Telegraph. In one the seeds are said to be " mixed, round and wrinkled," 
in the second and third they are " but slightly wrinkled." And since on the 
one hand the seeds of Telephone are admittedly " wrinkled," while on the other 
hand there is some doubt whether Telegraph and Telephone are really distinct, 
it is clear that the offspring of the hybrid Telegraph had not become sharply 
divided into a smooth-seeded and a wrinkled race in 1879, as they should have 
done on Mendel's hypothesis. The presence of forms intermediate between the 
categories "round" and "wrinkled" in 1879 seems proved by the fact that the 
controversy referred to arose. The TelegrapJi of to-day is more than 25 genera- 
tions removed from the original cross, and it should, on Mendel's view, have 
split into two groups, one with seeds completely smooth and rounded, the other 
with wrinkled seeds. Seeds of intermediate type should not occur, and only 
one plant out of every 2-'^ — 1, or say one plant in every thirty-three millions, 
should bear seeds of both kinds. 
As a matter of fact, the seeds of Telegraph as grown by Carter and Co. 
exhibit every conceivable condition between the perfectly smooth forms shown in 
Fig. 1, Plate II., and the forms with well-marked wrinkles shown in Fig. 4 on 
the same plate. The groups photographed in Figs. 1 — 4 were chosen from a 
single quart of Telegraph given to me by Messrs Carter ; and a rough estimate 
of the relative frequency with which the characters of each group occurred 
in a small sample gave the following result : 
Group 1 242 
Group 2 228 
Group 3 28 
Group 4 2 
500 
It is not suggested that the groups differ successively by approximately equal 
increments of wrinkles, so that the scale they form is certainly imperfect. The 
grouping of the peas is also very rough. But with all these defects the study of 
Telegraph seems to me to demonstrate that the offspring of a hybrid Pea, 
25 generations at least after crossing, may contain a large percentage of individuals 
which on Mendel's view that roundness is dominant ought never to occur at all. 
The distinction in colour between Telegraph and Telephone was also discussed 
twenty years ago. The seed-coats are often so opaque in all these races, 
that it is difficult to estimate cotyledon colour from descriptions of the pea 
