Produced by Crossing Tcosintc and Maize. 233 



•results obtained, that the plants which Sereno Watson 

 described as Zca canina, and which were afterward carefully 

 studied by the writer, are identical with the hybrids which Pro- 

 fessor Segura obtained at the Agricultural School of Mexico. 

 Teosinte, Euchlana mexicana, Schrad., is a plant of several 

 varieties native to Mexico, where the writer found it growing 

 in the Barranca Chica, near Guadalajara. It is grown as a 

 fodder plant in most warm countries, seldom flowering when 

 planted in Europe. The two-ranked ears are clustered in the 

 axils of the leaves, and have one fertile and one rudimentaiy 

 fiowerplaced in a hardened cup-shaped depression of the rhachis, 

 the lower coriaceous glume closing the mouth of the hood 

 formed by the rhachis (Plate XXII, Eig. la.). The male spike, 

 terminallj' borne, consists of two flowered spikelets, with three 

 stamens in each flower. The female spikelet has two flowers, 

 one perfect, and one anterior and abortive flower. When maize 

 is crossed with teosinte by the use of maize pollen, the hybrid 

 progeny of the first generation is intermediate and shows a 

 much shortened branch in the axil of a leaf with three or four 

 ears clustered together, and surrounded on the outside by 

 leaves, which are usually termed husks ( Fig. 2). These 

 hybrid ears resemble in a number of particulars those of 

 teosinte in that they are two ranked with the kernels in the 

 hardened depression of an enlarged zigzag rhachis, which 

 shows the beginning of a cob-like axis, on which in 

 this case the grains are disposed in a distichous manner (Fig. 

 i). The kernels of this hybrid generation are larger, sharp- 

 pointed and protrude between the scales (glumes) from the cup- 

 shaped depression of the axis, which is in this case shallower 

 than in teosinte. The outer glume, which is hard in teosinte, 

 becomes larger and softer in the hybrid progeny. The axis 

 is still firm, glossy and chitinous. In the second year maize 

 pollen is again used, to cross with the hybrid plants of the first 

 generation. The result of this cross is a form of ear in which 



