FOUNDERS OF PEANT BREEDING 
295 
paper in question, read before the Horticultural Society, June 3, 
1823, was entitled, “Some remarks on the Supposed Influence of 
the Pollen in Cross-breeding, on the color of the seed-coats 
of plants and the Qualities of their Fruits.” 
In the particular experiment in question, Knight determined 
that, in crossing a pea with grey seed-coats upon one with white 
seed-coats, no immediate change took place, but that the resulting 
hybrid seeds produced plants the next year which bore grey seeds, 
as well as having the purple-colored stems and flowers of the male 
parent. 
He further discovered the fact that by crossing plants grown 
from these (heterozygous) grey seeds, with pollen from what he 
calls a “permanent” white variety, plants of two types appeared, 
one bearing grey and the other white seeds. 
The work of William Herbert was to a considerable extent 
contemporary with that of Knight. Born January 12, 1778, son 
of the Bari of Carnarvon, educated at Eton and Oxford, he was 
trained for the bar which he finally left for the church, en- 
tering orders and finally becoming Dean of Manchester. Her- 
bert worked largely on the improvement of florists’ flowers, but 
also conducted experiments with some agricultural plants. He 
was engaged for a considerable time upon his own experiments, 
before he came upon the work of Koelreuter, which he immediate- 
ly assimilated and estimated at its true value. Herbert’s experi- 
mental work was animated by the connection of the fact which he 
felt himself to have established, that the then current botanical 
dogma was wrong, which regarded the existence of sterile off- 
spring from a cross, as evidence that the two parents were of 
different “species.” His views were contrary to those held at the 
time by Knight, in common with many botanists, that the pro- 
duction of a fertile cross was proof that the two parents were of 
the same species, “assuming, as a consequence” that the sterile 
offspring were nearly conclusive evidence that they were of dif- 
ferent species, and this dictum was advanced without suggesting 
any alteration in the definition of the term “species,” but leaving 
it to imply what it had before universally signified in the language 
of botanists. 
A PRECURSOR OF MENDEE 
Besides the work of Knight and Herbert, an experiment from 
the first half of the nineteenth century, which has elicited con- 
siderable interest, because of its suggestion of the later discoveries 
