The variations, or as I provisionally conceive it, that differentiant division among the gametes of which variation (neglecting environment) is the visible expression, has arisen and can arise at one or more points of time, and we have no difficulty in believing it to occur now. In many cases we have clear evidence that it does. Crossing,—dare we call it asymmetrical fertilization?—is one of the causes of the production of heterogeneous gametes—the result of divisions qualitatively differentiant and perhaps asymmetrical[70].
There are other causes and we have to find them. Some years ago I wrote that consideration of the causes of variation was in my judgment premature[71]. Now that through Mendel’s work we are clearing our minds as to the fundamental nature of “gametic” variation, the time is approaching when an investigation of such causes may be not unfruitful.
Of variation as distinct from transmission why does Professor Weldon take no heed? He writes (p. 244):
“If Mendel’s statements were universally valid, even among Peas, the characters of the seeds in the numerous hybrid races now existing should fall into one or other of a few definite categories, which should not be connected by intermediate forms.”
Now, as I have already pointed out, Mendel made no pretence of universal statement: but had he done so, the conclusion, which Professor Weldon here suggests should follow from such a universal statement, is incorrectly drawn. Mendel is concerned with the laws of transmission of existing characters, not with variation, which he does not discuss.
Nevertheless Professor Weldon has some acquaintance with the general fact of variability in certain peas, which he mentions (p. 236), but the bearing of this fact on the difficulty he enuntiates escapes him.
Results of crossing in regard to seed characters: normal and exceptional.
The conditions being the same, the question of the characters of the cross-bred zygotes which we will call AB’s depends primarily on the specific nature of the varieties which are crossed to produce them. It is unnecessary to point out that if all AB’s are to look alike, both the varieties A and B must be pure—not in the common sense of descended, as far as can be traced, through individuals identical with themselves, but pure in the Mendelian sense, that is to say that each must be at that moment producing only homogeneous gametes bearing the same characters A and B respectively. Purity of pedigree in the breeder’s sense is a distinct matter altogether. The length of time—or if preferred—the number of generations through which a character of a variety has remained pure, alters the probability of its dominance, i.e. its appearance when a gamete bearing it meets another bearing an antagonistic character, no more, so far as we are yet aware, than the length of time a stable element has been isolated alters the properties of the chemical compound which may be prepared from it.
Now when individuals (bearing contrary characters), pure in the sense indicated, are crossed together, the question arises, What will be the appearance of the first cross individuals? Here again, generally speaking, when thoroughly green cotyledons are crossed with thoroughly yellow cotyledons, the first-cross seeds will have yellow cotyledons; when fully round peas are crossed with fully wrinkled the first result will generally speaking be round, often with slight pitting as Mendel has stated. This has been the usual experience of Correns, Tschermak, Mendel, and myself[72] and, as we shall see, the amount of clear and substantial evidence to the contrary is still exceedingly small. But as any experienced naturalist would venture to predict, there is no universal rule in the matter. As Professor Weldon himself declares, had there been such a universal rule it would surely have been notorious. He might further have reflected that in Mendel’s day, when hybridisation was not the terra incognita it has since become, the assertion of such universal propositions would have been peculiarly foolish. Mendel does not make it; but Professor Weldon perceiving the inherent improbability of the assertion conceives at once that Mendel must have made it, and if Mendel doesn’t say so in words then he must have implied it. As a matter of fact Mendel never treats dominance as more than an incident in his results, merely using it as a means to an end, and I see no reason to suppose he troubled to consider to what extent the phenomenon is or is not universal—a matter with which he had no concern.
Of course there may be exceptions. As yet we cannot detect the causes which control them, though injury, impurity, accidental crossing, mistakes of various kinds, account for many. Mendel himself says, for instance, that unhealthy or badly grown plants give uncertain results. Nevertheless there seems to be a true residuum of exceptions not to be explained away. I will recite some that I have seen. In my own crosses I have seen green × green give yellow four times. This I incline to attribute to conditions or other disturbance, for the natural pods of these plants gave several yellows. At Messrs Suttons’ I saw second-generation seeds got by allowing a cross of Sutton’s Centenary (gr. wr.) × Eclipse (gr. rd.) to go to seed; the resulting seeds were both green and yellow, wrinkled and round. But in looking at a sample of Eclipse I found a few yellow seeds, say two per cent., which may perhaps be the explanation. Green wrinkled × green round may give all wrinkled, and again wrinkled × wrinkled may give round[73]. Of this I saw a clear case—supposing no mistake to have occurred—at Messrs Suttons’. Lastly we have the fact that in exceptional cases crossing two forms—apparently pure in the strict sense—may give a mixture in the first generation. There are doubtless examples also of unlikeness between reciprocals, and of this too I have seen one putative case[74].