8. _Debarbieux_ by _nain de Bretagne_ (very small; yellow cotyledons; very round) gave three pods, 12 seeds, all yellow cotyledons, of which two pods had eight seeds identical in shape with _Debarbieux_, while the third had four seeds like _Debarbieux_ but more dimpled. The reciprocal cross gave two seeds exactly like _nain de Bretagne_. But it may be objected that the shape of this large grey pea is very peculiar[98]; and that it maintains its type remarkably when fertilised by many distinct varieties though its pollen effects little or no change in them; for, so long as round varieties of _sativum_ are used as mothers, this is true as we have seen. But when once it is understood that in _Graue Riesen_ there is no question of wrinkling, seeing that the variety behaves as a _round_ variety, the shape and especially the size of the seed must be treated as a maternal property. [98] It is certainly subject to considerable changes according to conditions. Those ripened in my garden are without exception much larger and flatter than Vilmorin’s seeds (now two years old) from which they grew. The colour of the coats is also much duller. These changes are just what is to be expected from the English climate--taken with the fact that my sample of this variety was late sown. _Why_ the distinction between the shape of _Graue Riesen_ and that of ordinary round peas should be a matter of maternal physiology we do not know. The question is one for the botanical chemist. But there is evidently very considerable regularity, the seeds borne by the _cross-breds_ exhibiting the form of the “grey” pea, which is then a dominant character as much as the seed-coat characters are. And that is what Tschermak’s _Graue Riesen_ crosses actually did, thereby exhibiting dominance in a very clear form. To interject these cases as a mystery without pointing out how easily they can be reconciled with the “law of dominance” may throw an unskilled reader into gratuitous doubt. Finally, since _the wrinkled peas_, _Laxton’s Alpha_ and _British Queen_, _pollinated by a large flat mange-tout, witness Nos. 3 and 6 above_, became round in both cases where this experiment was made, we here merely see the usual dominance of the non-wrinkled character; though of course if a _round_-seeded mother be used there can be no departure from the maternal shape, as far as roundness is concerned. Correns’ observations on the shapes of a “grey” pea crossed with a round shelling pea, also quoted by Professor Weldon as showing no dominance of roundness, are of course of the same nature as those just discussed. _C. Evidence of Knight and Laxton._