Happily, thanks to Professor Weldon, we know rather more of the third case, that of _Telephone_, which, whether as father or mother, was frequently found by Tschermak to give either green, greenish, or patchwork-seeds when crossed with yellow varieties. It behaves, in short, “like a green-seeded pea of exceptional dominance,” as we are now told. For this dominant quality of _Telephone’s_ greenness we are asked to account _by appeal to its ancestry_. May we not expect, then, this _Telephone_ to be--if not a pure-bred green pea from time immemorial--at least as pure-bred as other green peas which do _not_ exhibit dominance of green at all? Now, what is _Telephone_? Do not let us ask too much. Ancestry takes a lot of proving. We would not reject him “_parce qu’il n’avait que soixante & onze quartiers, & que le reste de son arbre généalogique avait été perdu par l’injure du tems_.” But with stupefaction we learn from Professor Weldon himself that _Telephone_ is the very variety which he takes _as his type of a permanent and incorrigible mongrel_, a character it thoroughly deserves. From _Telephone_ he made his colour scale! Tschermak declares the cotyledons to be “yellowish or whitish green, often entirely bright yellow[151].” So little is it a thorough-bred green pea, that it cannot always keep its own self-fertilised offspring green. Not only is this pea a parti-coloured mongrel, but Professor Weldon himself quotes Culverwell that as late as 1882 both _Telegraph_ and _Telephone_ “will always come from one sort, more especially from the green variety”; and again regarding a supposed good sample of _Telegraph_ that “Strange to say, although the peas were taken from one lot, those sown in January produced a great proportion of the light variety known as _Telephone_. These were of every shade of light green up to white, and could have been shown for either variety,” _Gard. Chron._ 1882 (2), p. 150. This is the variety whose green, it is suggested, partially “dominates” over the yellow of _Pois d’Auvergne_, a yellow variety which has a clear lineage of about a century, and probably more. If, therefore, the facts regarding _Telephone_ have any bearing on the significance of ancestry, they point the opposite way from that in which Professor Weldon desires to proceed. [151] “_Speichergewebe gelblich--oder weisslich--grün, manchmal auch vollständig hellgelb._” Tschermak (36), p. 480.