360 Bulletin 313 



cases, the seeds for planting were germinated in sterilized soil and later 

 transplanted into the field. In the majority of cases in these plats, twenty- 

 four seedlings from each type were grown. 



These plants had reached sufficient age in 19 10 and 19 11 to enable a 

 safe judgment to be made as to the general transmission of the characters 

 for which they were selected. The writer is now able to state definitely 

 that a very large number of the variations selected have transmitted 

 their characters in marked degree. Indeed, many of the types appear 

 to be fully as uniform as the varieties of wheat or corn that we have 

 in cultivation, and are as nearly fixed in type as are ordinary 

 commercial varieties. As would be expected, however, many of the 

 types selected proved to be of hybrid nature and such types broke up and 

 frequently gave very ntimerous types. In some cases the variations 

 among the seedlings from one original plant were so numerous that no 

 similarity to the original plant could be discerned. 



The factor in which most interest centers is the transmission of yield 

 and of those characters on which yield depends. While some of the plants 

 that were heavy yielders in the clonal tests failed to transmit this quality 

 to any marked degree, in general the light yielders in the clonal tests were 

 light yielders by seed propagation and the heavy yielders in the clonal 

 tests were heavy yielders by seed propagation. In Table i (page 356) are 

 given the average yields from second and third year crops of ten of the 

 lightest- and ten of the heaviest -yielding clonal types, and similar two- 

 year average yields of the seedlings grown from them. It will be seen 

 from this table that light-yielding plants gave light -yielding progenies, 

 heavy-yielding plants gave heavy-yielding progenies. There is of course 

 considerable variation, and occasionally a plant tested as a light yielder 

 in the clonal plats would give a good yield in its seedlings. By an exami- 

 nation of all the plants that were tested for their yields as clons and by 

 seed propagation, it is clear that, in general, as the yield of the clons 

 increased the yield of the seedlings increased. 



This is illustrated graphically in Fig. 92. In this figure, the ascending, 

 heavy, solid line represents the yields of 100 individuals tested as clonal 

 varieties, and the broken line the yields of the seedlings from inbred seed 

 of the same individuals. The yield is indicated by the height from the 

 basal line, each horizontal line representing one ounce. The plants were 

 arranged in order of sequence of average yield of clonal plants for two 

 years, and each dot represents the average yield of five such plants. The 

 first dot at the beginning of the solid line on the left represents the average 

 yield of the five lowest-yielding original plants as shown by their clonal 

 tests, and the next dot the average yield of the next five in order of yield, 

 and so on throughout the series. The circles on the broken line represent 



