In 1868 I sowed the peas of the preceding year’s growth, and selected various plants for earliness, productiveness, &c. Some of the plants had light-coloured stems and leaves; these all showed white flowers, and produced round white seeds[110]. Others had purple flowers, showed the purple on the stems and at the axils of the stipules, and produced seeds with maple, grey, purple-streaked, or mottled, and a few only, again, with violet-coloured envelopes. Some of the seeds were round, some partially indented[111]. The pods on each plant, in the majority of instances, contained peas of like characters; but in a few cases the peas in the same pod varied slightly, and in some instances a pod or two on the same plant contained seeds all distinct from the remainder[112]. The white-flowered plants were generally dwarfish, of about the height of “Ringleader”; but the coloured-flowered sorts varied altogether as to height, period of ripening, and colour and shape of seed[113]. Those seeds with violet-coloured envelopes produced nearly all maple- or parti-coloured seeds, and only here and there one with a violet-coloured envelope; that colour, again, appeared only incidentally, and in a like degree in the produce of the maple-coloured seeds[114]. [110] Recessive in flower-colour, seed-coat colour, and in seed-shape as a maternal character: pure recessives as the sequel proved. [111] These are then a mixture of pure dominants and cross-bred dominants, and are now inextricably confused. This time the round seeds may have been all on particular plants--showing recessive seed-shape as a maternal character. It seems just possible that this fact suggested the idea of “round” seeds on the _coloured_ plants in the last generation. Till that result is confirmed it should be regarded as very doubtful on the evidence. But we cannot at the present time be sure how much difference there was between these round seeds and the _normal_ maples in point of shape; and on the whole it seems most probable that the roundness was a mere fluctuation, such as commonly occurs among the peas with large indented seeds. [112] Is this really evidence of segregation of characters, the flower being the unit? In any case the possibility makes the experiment well worth repeating, especially as Correns has seen a phenomenon conceivably similar. [113] Being a mixture of heterozygotes (probably involving several pairs of allelomorphs) and homozygotes. [114] This looks as if the violet colour was merely due to irregularity of xenia.