Trifolium Pratense Quinquefolium. 41 
leaves must obviously neither be removed nor even dam- 
aged. 
For these reasons it is desirable to effect the selection 
in the seedling stage, or at any rate before transplanting. 
This process had already been begun in the spring of 
1892 and needed therefore only to be perfected by con- 
tinued selection. And the result justified my expecta- 
tions. 
In the spring of 1893 I sowed the seed of the 18 plants 
of the year before, already referred to, separately for 
each seedparent. I recorded the seedlings when the 
third leaf had unfolded. If all the leaves were normal, 
I straightway weeded out the plant; but if one or more 
of its leaves had a supernumerary leaflet I preserved it. 
Of the 3409 seedlings which I examined 2471 were normal 
and 938 were not, i. e., about 30 %. 1 Of course the re- 
maining 70% must also be abnormal, but the anomaly 
was not yet recognizable in the seedlings. Some of them 
which I transplanted produced, as adult plants, leaves 
with from 4 to 7 leaflets in large numbers. 
I determined the percentage production of abnormal 
seedlings in this manner for 16 of the 18 seed-parents; 
the values were distributed over them as follows : 
10-20% 21-30% 31-40% 41-50% 51-60% 61-70% 
Seed-parents^ 173221 
I further chose from this series a seed-parent pro- 
ducing 60% abnormal seedlings. It had itself had in its 
early stages a compound primordial leaf, which fact also 
marked it out for the continuation of the race. It will 
be found in the table on p. 38 under 1892 C. 
Amongst the seedlings from the seeds of this parent 
1 Botan. Jaarbock, Gent, Vol. X, p. 37, where the two figures 
have been transposed by an oversight. 
