Sweet Pea Notebooks : Sweet pea notebook '08' [1908 crosses]

Sweet Pea Notebooks

<p style='text-align: justify;'> Notebook recording Bateson and Punnett's experiments with sweet pea crosses in 1908. Records were paginated 1-46, followed by a set of blank pages; pagination then continues from 59-167 followed by a longer series of blanks. At the back of the notebook is a set of maps of the layout of the plant beds pp <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(233);return false;'>iii(v)-vi</a>. Entries are recorded in two different handwritings. The general format of the record is that the parents are recorded as numbers with a superscript or sometimes as a named variety. Since sweet peas can be selfed, some crosses have only a single parent. The date of sowing and the date of planting out are recorded, together with other observations on the plants such as colour, height and petal form. A note has been inserted into the book page <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage();return false;'>79a</a> containing details of a cross they were clearly looking for: a 3:1:1:3 Mendelian segregation. From this point on the scoring and classification of progeny becomes much more detailed and systematic, and tables of classified progeny begin to appear e.g. pp <a href='' onclick='store.loadPage(223);return false;'>162v-167</a>. </p>