thereby changing the visible character of the individual plant or animal in which it occurs. To put the matter a little differently, one germ-cell differs from another in having alternatives present in place of some of the factors of the latter. A given germ-cell can never have more than one of the possible alternatives of each factor. These alternatives of a factor are called its allelomorphs.
Now a mature germ-cell has a single system of these factors: but when two germ-cells unite, there result from that union two kinds of cells—namely, immature germ-cells and body-cells; and both these kinds of cells contain a double system of factors, because of course they have received a single entire system from each parent. This is the second of the fundamental principles of Mendelism: that the factors are single in the mature germ-cell, but in duplicate in the body-cell (and also in the immature germ-cell).
In every cell with a double system of factors, there are necessarily present two representatives from each set of allelomorphs, but these may or may not be alike—or in technical language the individual may be homozygous, or heterozygous, as regards the given set of alternative factors. Looking at it from another angle, there is a single visible character in the plant or animal, but it is produced by a double factor, in the germ-plasm.
When the immature germ-cell, with its double system of factors, matures, it throws out half the factors, retaining only a single system: and the allelomorphic factors which then segregate into different cells are, as has been said above, ordinarily uninfluenced by their stay together.
But the allelomorphic factors are not the only ones which are segregated into different germ-cells, at the maturation of the cell; for the factors which are not alternative are likewise distributed, more or less independently of each other, so that it is largely a matter of chance