Mendel published it in 1865, but his paper
remained nearly unknown to scientific hybridists. It is only of late
years that it has assumed a high place in scientific literature, and
attained the first rank as an investigation on fundamental questions of
heredity. [294] Read in the light of modern ideas on unit characters it
is now one of the most important works on heredity and has already
widespread and abiding influence on the philosophy of hybridism in
general.
But from its very nature and from the choice of the material made by
Mendel, it is restricted to balanced or varietal crosses. It assumes
pairs of characters and calls the active unit of the pair dominant, and
the latent recessive, without further investigations of the question of
latency. It was worked out by Mendel for a large group of varieties of
peas, but it holds good, with only apparent exceptions, for a wide range
of cases of crosses of varietal characters. Recently many instances have
been tested, and even in many cases third and later generations have
been counted, and whenever the evidence was complete enough to be
trusted, Mendel's prophecy has been found to be right.
According to this law of Mendel's the pairs of antagonistic characters
in the hybrid split up in their progeny, some individuals reverting to
the pure parental types, some crossing with each other anew, and so
giving rise to a new generation of hybrids.
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