34, 39 however, obtained intermediate tints from similar
crosses in the genus Verbascum. With respect to the turnips see Herbert
'Amaryllidaceae' 1837 page 370.) Dr. Herbert raised many seedlings, as he
informed me, from Swedish turnips crossed by two other varieties, and these
never produced flowers of an intermediate tint, but always like one of their
parents. I fertilised the purple sweet-pea (Lathyrus odoratus), which has a
dark reddish-purple standard-petal and violet-coloured wings and keel, with
pollen of the painted lady sweet-pea, which has a pale cherry-coloured
standard, and almost white wings and keel; and from the same pod I twice
raised plants perfectly resembling both sorts; the greater number resembling
the father. So perfect was the resemblance, that I should have thought there
had been some mistake, if the plants which were at first identical with the
paternal variety, namely, the painted-lady, had not later in the season
produced, as mentioned in a former chapter, flowers blotched and streaked with
dark purple. I raised grandchildren and great-grandchildren from these crossed
plants, and they continued to resemble the painted-lady, but during later
generations became rather more blotched with purple, yet none reverted
completely to the original mother-plant, the purple sweet-pea. The following
case is slightly different, but still shows the same principle: Naudin (15/21.
'Nouvelles Archives du Museum' tome 1 page 100.) raised numerous hybrids
between the yellow Linaria vulgaris and the purple L. purpurea, and during
three successive generations the colours kept distinct in different parts of
the same flower.
From cases such as the foregoing, in which the offspring of the first
generation perfectly resemble either parent, we come by a small step to those
cases in which differently coloured flowers borne on the same root resemble
both parents, and by another step to those in which the same flower or fruit
is striped or blotched with the two parental colours, or bears a single stripe
of the colour or other characteristic quality of one of the parent-forms. With
hybrids and mongrels it frequently or even generally happens that one part of
the body resembles more or less closely one parent and another part the other
parent; and here again some resistence to fusion, or, what comes to the same
thing, some mutual affinity between the organic atoms of the same nature,
apparently comes into play, for otherwise all parts of the body would be
equally intermediate in character. So again, when the offspring of hybrids or
mongrels, which are themselves nearly intermediate in character, revert either
wholly or by segments to their ancestors, the principle of the affinity of
similar, or the repulsion of dissimilar atoms, must come into action. To this
principle, which seems to be extremely general, we shall recur in the chapter
on pangenesis.
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