1478. 110 The Kallikak Family transmitted from parent to offspring in a definite way. His classical work was on the propagation of the ordinary garden pea, in which case he found that a quality like tallness, as contrasted to dwarfness, was transmitted as follows: -- If tall and dwarf peas were crossed, he found in the first generation nothing but tall peas. But if these peas were allowed to grow and fertilize themselves, in the next generation he got tall and dwarf peas in the ratio of three to one. The dwarf peas in this case bred true, i.e. when they were planted by themselves and self-fertilized there was never anything but dwarf peas, no matter how many generations were tested. On the other hand, the tall peas were divisible by experiment into two groups; first, those that always bred true, viz. always tall peas; and secondly, another group that bred tall and dwarf in the same ratio of three to one; and from these the same cycle was repeated. Mendel called the character, which did [begin italics]not[end italics] appear in the first generation (dwarfness), "recessive"; the other (tallness) he called "dominant." The recessive factor is now generally considered to be due to the absence of something which, if present, would give the dominant factor. According to this view, dwarfness is simply the absence of tallness. [end]