94 



REPORTS OF INVESTIGATIONS AND PROJECTS. 



In Lychnis alba purple and white flowered individuals give typical Mendel- 

 ian crosses, and several abnormalities or atypic conditions are found to be 

 rather strongly though imperfectly inherited. A large number of crosses have 

 been made this year in Lychnis, particularly for the purpose of attacking cer- 

 tain problems relative to the inheritance of sex. 



In crosses between yellow and pale flowered forms of Verbascuni blattaria, 

 the yellow is dominant. In nearly every Fj family the number of pale-flow- 

 ered individuals has been in excess of expectation, and considerably so in 

 one or two families. Further crosses have been made to determine whether 

 this is merely a matter of random sampling or whether it is a normal con- 

 dition, and if the latter, what may be its cause. 



Many pedigreed families of the Shirley poppy have been studied, and the 

 general hereditary relations of the various tints and color-patterns are more 

 or less clearly discerned. While the range of color is great, the variation 

 within this range is not continuous. There are relatively few color-types, and 

 within each of these there is but slight variation. There are also some ob- 

 vious irregularities involving latency and perhaps also coupling. 



The scope and extent of Dr. Shull's pedigree work during the past season 

 is concisely shown in the following table, arranged as in his previous reports : 



Dr. J. Arthur Harris has had general oversight of the preceding cultures 

 during Dr. Shull's absence, and he is in addition making a detailed study of 

 variation, correlation, and heredity of quantitative characters in several vari- 

 eties of beans. Some 20,000 individually labeled seeds were planted in selected 

 habitats at the Station for Experimental Evolution, in southeastern Ohio, 

 in western Kansas, and at the Missouri Botanical Garden. Also, smaller 

 plantings w'ere made of a number of species to determine their fitness for 

 serious experimental work. 



