336 Nutrition and Selection. 
better than the upper ones, 1 and the same is true of other 
species of cereals. 
Lastly some reference should be made to those cases 
in which individual seeds possess the peculiarity of 
germinating late, and of remaining one or more years in 
the soil, as for instance the small seeds of various species 
of clover. In Xanthium canadcnsc each fruit contains 
two seeds, one of which germinates after the first win- 
ter, the other not until after the second. 2 
When we are dealing with semi-latent or, in general, 
with highly variable characters, a selection of seeds either 
by their size and weight or by their place of origin on 
the plant is to be recommended in many cases, and the 
general rule seems to be that the place of origin of the 
best seeds will also be that of the desired variants. There 
are some cases in which this rule does not apply, such 
as we have seen in Trifolium incarnatum, where it is 
the smallest late germinating seeds which contain the 
best representatives of the four-leaved half race. 
In Chelidoniuui inajus plenum the single flowers 
bloom first, and the double ones later, as we have seen 
in the preceding section ( 28). I have harvested the 
seeds of both and sown them separately; but found no 
difference in respect of the doubling amongst the off- 
spring. BATESON and Miss PERxz 3 also failed to find 
any difference in respect of doubling amongst the off- 
spring of normal and abnormal flowers of the same 
plant with Veronica Biixbanniii. In Oenothera Lamarck- 
iana I found about the same percentage of annual and 
1 F. F. BRUYNING, Proefnemingen met havervarictcitcn, Wage- 
ningen, 1900. 
2 J. C. ARTHUR, Proceedings Ann. Meeting Soc. Agr'ic., Science, 
August, 1895. 
3 W. BATESON and Miss PERTZ, he. c\t., p. 79. 
