424 Ever-sporting Varieties 



strength of the plant and the degree of develop- 

 ment of its anomaly. The same holds good with 

 other monstrosities, and badly nourished speci- 

 mens of rich races with twisted or fasciated 

 stems always tend to reversion. This rever- 

 sion, however, is not necessarily correlated with 

 the hereditary percentage and therefore does 

 not always indicate a lessening of the degree of 

 inheritance. This shows that even in those 

 cases an improvement may be expected, if only 

 the means can be found to subject the twisted 

 and the fasciated races to the same sharp test 

 as the tricotylous varieties. 



Much remains to be done, and the principle of 

 the selection of parents according to the average 

 constitution of their progeny seems to be one of 

 the most promising in the whole realm of varia- 

 bility. 



Besides tricotylous, the syncotylous seed- 

 lings may be used in the same way. They 

 are more rarely met with, and in most instances 

 seem to belong only to the unpromising half- 

 races. The black bindweed {Polygonum Con- 

 volvulus), the jointed charlock {Raphanus Rap- 

 hanistrum), the glaucous evening-primrose 

 (Oenothera glauca) and many other plants seem 

 to contain such half-races. On the other hand 

 I found a plant of CentrantJms macrosiphon 

 yielding as much as 55;^ of syncotylous chil- 



