EXPERIMENT STATION REPORTS. 291 



new flowers too late to ripen before the early frosts. Thus came the 

 failure of nearly all that would yield data on the inheritance of shape 

 in beans. Four thousand five hundred and ninety-two plants were 

 threshed individually and the seed placed in envelopes. The data gave 

 very good evidence on the inheritance of size. The majority of these 

 data shows ^fendelian segregations of one pair of characters, the large 

 size being dominant. The segregations of greater complexity contained 

 too few individuals to permit of interpretation. 



The problem of inheritance of shape is being undertaken by Mr. W. 

 K. S. Sie during the season of 191G. There are nearly 300 progeny plats 

 planted this year, and 157 of these belong to Mr. Sie's thesis work. A 

 small variety series has been planted, and 35 new lots are growing in 

 selection plats. Including increases, the bean work for 1916 aggregates 

 343 separate plats. 



The work with field peas began in 1913 with 73 lots (all mixtures) 

 of which 70 bore U. S. Seed and Plant Introduction numbers. These 

 were planted in a row series using a Michigan sort as a check. As the 

 larger portion of these were foreign, it was thought best to continue all 

 the lots in the 1914 series regardless of their 1913 production. Those 

 that produced poorly both j'^ears were dropped from the 1915 plantings. 

 Individual plant selections were made in 1915 and planted in 1916 as 

 progenies. 



The alfalfa breeding work started in 1906 when Mr. M. Craig gathered 

 seed from a number of individual plants at M. A. C. Other lots have 

 been obtained yearly from seedsmen, other plant breeders, and through 

 the U. S. Department of Agriculture and from around the world, aggre- 

 gating 195 sources of seed. Nurseries have been set out in 1907, 1909, 

 1911, 1913 and 1916. 



The first three nurseries contained so much unproductive unhardy 

 material that it was difficult to get progeny plats in a rigid competative 

 test. There were those that winter killed and then others that suc- 

 cumbed in the summer to various diseases resembling crown rots. Yet 

 with each succeeding generation of the breeding work there has been a 

 lower death rate among the plants. In the first nursery very few plants 

 produced seed, but seeding has been more general among the individuals 

 of later generations. The highest yielder of the 1909 nursery produced 

 41.3 grams in 1910. In the next generation (1911 nursery) there were 

 30 that exceeded this production in 1913. None of these plants (1911 

 nursery) produced mentionable quantities of seed in 1914. 



The problem now (since we have found hardy alfalfa) is not to get 

 good seed production in favorable years, but to find a strain that will 

 pay its way in the ofiE year, if we are to make alfalfa seed production 

 a success in Michigan. 



In 1914, certain individual plants (that were found scattered through 

 the 1913 alfalfa nursery but confined entirely to it), did something that 

 had not been observed in alfalfa before. The nurseries lost their leaves 

 from leaf-spot that j^ear, and the above mentioned plants actually set 

 leaves back on the old stems, stuck to their job, and produced seed that 

 year. Seventeen of them yielded at a rate that would amount to three 

 bushels of seed per acre if such a plant could be found on each space, 

 equal to that occupied by the plants in question. Other plants in the 

 same progenies had this power to a lesser degree. The normal thing 



