Jedes von den 7 Hybriden-Merkmalen gleicht dem einen der beiden Stamm-Merkmale entweder so vollkommen, dass das andere der Beobachtung entschwindet, oder ist demselben so ähnlich, dass eine sichere Unterscheidung nicht stattfinden kann.
Each of the seven hybrid traits resembles one of the two parental traits either so completely that the other one seems to escape observation, or is so similar to the same that a reliable distinction cannot be made.
the same = demselben The manuscript originally had dem anderen (“the other”), and corrects this into demselben (“the same”).
hybrid traits = Hybriden-Merkmalen Bateson has “crosses”. Here, and in the following, we prefer Sherwood’s translation. Mendel’s original manuscript actually has hybriden Merkmalen, which was apparently misread by the printer, who turned the adjective hybriden into a noun by capitalising it, and connected it by a dash with Merkmalen to create a compound noun; see Franz Weiling, “Geschichte des Textes der ‘Versuche’ sowie textkritische Bemerkungen”, in: Gregor Mendel, Versuche über Pflanzenhybriden, Ostwalds Klassiker der Naturwissenschaften, Neue Folge, Band 6 (Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1970), p. 19. Since Mendel did not correct this mistake in his offprint, we have not done so either in our transcription of the original text. But we took the original spelling into account in our translation. Mendel does not speak of the “traits of hybrids” here but of “hybrid traits”, i.e. traits that themselves are hybrid (see p. 15, s. 7). There are more instances of similar misreadings by the printer; see p. 10, s. 14, p. 14, s. 1, p. 15, s. 1 and p. 15, s. 3.
parental traits = Stamm-Merkmale Bateson has “parental forms”; see p. 16, s. 14.