Page:Mendel's principles of heredity; a defence.pdf/113

a generation sooner than can species B into species A. He deduces therefrom that Kölreuter's opinion can hardly be maintained that "the two natures in hybrids are perfectly in equilibrium." It appears, however, that Kölreuter does not merit this criticism, but that Gärtner rather has overlooked a material point, to which he himself elsewhere draws attention, viz. that "it depends which individual is chosen for further transformation." Experiments which in this connection were carried out with two species of Pisum demonstrated that as regards the choice of the fittest individuals for the purpose of further fertilisation it may make a great difference which of two species is transformed into the other. The two experimental plants differed in five characters, while at the same time those of species A were all dominant and those of species B all recessive. For mutual transformation A was fertilised with pollen of B, and B with pollen of A, and this was repeated with both hybrids the following year. With the first experiment ^B⁄_A there were eighty-seven plants available in the third year of experiment for the selections of individuals for further crossing, and these were of the possible thirty-two forms; with the second experiment ^A⁄_B seventy-three plants resulted, which agreed throughout perfectly in habit with the pollen parent; in their internal composition, however, they must have been just as varied as the forms of the other experiment. A definite selection was consequently only possible with the first experiment; with the second some plants selected at random had to be excluded. Of the latter only a portion of the flowers were crossed with the A pollen, the others were left to fertilise themselves. Among each five plants which were selected in both