236 TRANSACTIONS OF THE NORTHERN 



But the little light afforded l)y the experiments of such men as he 

 only serves to give greater relief to the darkness which envelops us, 

 and the more we know of their success, the more we wish to learn. 



Then, again, the whole subject of plant nutrition is far from defin- 

 itely settled as yet. Does the plant get its nitrogen from ammonia or 

 nitric acid — who can tell? But 1 forbear. It would be no great trouble 

 to indicate several hundred points of inquiry, all of vast pecuniary im- 

 portance, the correct knowledge upon which would be worth millions of 

 dollars in the aggregate, and the inquiries and experiments upon them 

 will take years of patient study and care to demonstrate correct solutions. 



Private amateur effort i'^ not equal to the task. Shall we have the 

 experiment stations .'* 



Will the Northern Illinois Horticultural Society lend its influence 

 to hasten their establishment .' 



Mr. McAfee having obtained permission to exhibit the result of 

 some experiments with corn, said : 



I have here samples of corn which have all sprung from one kind, 

 namely, a pure white eight-rowed dwarfish corn which I have raised now 

 for three years, and have been very careful to plant only white grains, 

 though each year some colored grains 7voiild appear in the product. In 

 eighteen seventy-one a manifest sport appeared, that is a stalk which was 

 deep reddish purple, grains, cob, husks, stem, leaves, and even the- 

 pith, being strongly colored. In eighteen seventy-two I planted a square 

 plat with these purple grains all from the same ear, and at the same time 

 planted another square Avith the rose colored grains picked out of mixed 

 ears. I wished to ascertain whether sports such as this one purple stalk 

 undoubtedly was, would entirely revert to the original type or not. 



When ripe, I found about one-sixth of the ears of the purple plat 

 just like their immediate parent, that is purple throughout the plant ; 

 and the rest were all shades from pure white to the deepest purple, but 

 there was no mixture i/pon any ear, each ear was in florists language a " self. " 

 The plat planted with rose colored grains picked out of mixed ears, 

 produced mixed ears, every one of them, and though in some of them the 

 rose color predominated, there was not a " self " colored ear in the 

 square. Here then I think I have learned this principle in plant-breed- 

 ing. ''Sports are inclined to produce '' self s" in color, while crosses and 

 reverted forms have a tende?icy to produce variegatioTi in colors. I have 

 been trying to improve the form of the ear of this white corn by judi- 

 cious selection of the ears having the largest number of rows, and I 

 think I am making jjrogress, a larger proportion of ears appear to be of 

 the required form than did formerly. But I notice that the upper ear on 

 each stalk retains the old form, and the improvemetit of form occurs in the 

 loiver ears every time. Hence I judge that when we wish to change a 

 plant by selection we should select from accessory buds as responding to 

 our desire for change most readily, while the regular buds retain old 

 characteristics with greatest tenacity. 



