450 MR. A, W. SUTTON ON WILD FORMS AND 
The seeds taken from this fruit were sown, and during the past season 
(1907) twenty young plants were raised. None of these resemble the parent 
form very closely, but they exhibit the same variation that is met with among 
seedlings of the cultivated potato. 
The tubers of the parent Solanum etuberosumare white in the skin and flesh, 
and after twenty years of garden culture ave ‘age about 14 inches in diameter. 
Those of the seedlings, however, ary very much in size, some being already 
as large as cultivated potatoes : they are also very varied in colour of skin, 
some being white, others dark purple, pale blue, or rose white; one seedling 
has given tubers the flesh of which is deep purple and the skin almost black, 
characters which are met with in some of the cultivated varieties now growing 
in Chile. 
The pollen-grains of the parent are elliptical like those of all wild species, 
and the seed-berries are round or slightly oval, but are covered somewhat 
closely with distinet white spots, in which they differ from the fruits of all 
other wild types. 
(Plate 47. Solanum etuberosum, Lindl.—W hite-flowered seedling.) I was 
only able to examine the pollen-grains of one of. the twenty seedlings above 
referred to, and. that happened to be a plant bearing white flowers, In this 
‘ase the pollen-grains were regular and elliptieal, and entirely similar in 
form to those of the parent. The coming season I hope to examine more of 
the seedlings, to determine if the pollen-grains of any of them are irregular 
like those of the cultivated potatoes. 
[ P.8. (Sept. 1908).—In order to avoid any doubt as to the parentage of 
the seedlings above described, several different blooms of Solanum etuberosum 
were artificially self-pollinated under controlled conditions in 1907. 
Ripe fruits were obtained from several flowers, Seedlings raised from 
these in 1908 exhibit the same variability in charaeter of foliage, and 
colour of the flowers as those obtained from the single berry collected in 
1906, the male parent of which was uncertain, and they vary also in the 
Гогт and colour of tuber. 
Some of the plants raised from the same berry have white flowers, others 
lilac-eoloured blooms. 
The pollen-grains of the white-flowered plants of 1008, like the one white- 
flowering plant of 1907 alluded to above, are elliptical like those of the lilac- 
flowered parent, while those of the lilac-flowered seedling are irregular and 
polygonal in form, corresponding closely in these respeets with pollen-grains 
of the cultivated potatoes. These are illustrated in Plate 49, and on Plate 48 
is figured one of the lilac-flowered seedlings raised by selfing flowers of 
Solanum etuberosum in 1907, with drawings of its irregular pollen-grains. 
From the uniform character and shape of its pollen-grains, it would appear 
