of the strains developed by combining pod corn with pop- 
corn, especially those with tassel seeds, should be quite 
capable of perpetuating themselves in the wild in a suit- 
able environment. 
(F). The suggestion (80) that the characteristics of pod 
corn are the product of plant hormone action is quite 
valid but wholly irrelevant. It is undoubtedly true that 
pod corn involves plant hormone action, but we do not 
see how this fact can be regarded as evidence against the 
idea of pod corn as the ancestral form. We would assume 
that some of the principal changes which have occurred 
in the maize plant during the course of its evolution under 
domestication are concerned with the nature and amount 
of various plant hormones or in the manner in which 
these act. Indeed, we suspect that one of the effects of 
the pod-corn gene is to direct the plant’s energy into 
terminal inflorescences and that one of the reasons why 
modern homozygous pod corn is usually monstrous is be- 
cause all of the energy of a massive single stalk goes into 
a single terminal inflorescence. Our crosses of pod corn 
and popcorn indicate that terminal inflorescences are less 
monstrous when they occur on a plant with a number 
of stalks. A freely-tillering plant undoubtedly has a dif- 
ferent hormonal complex than a single-stalked one. 
(G). The conclusion that the half-tunicate form of pod 
corn, although in some respects more promising as a wild 
ancestor than the full tunicate, involves only the glumes 
of the ear, is erroneous and results from confusing half 
tunicate with the character, first recognized as ‘‘ pallee 
sviluppate’’ by Bonvicini (8), later by Andres (2) as 
‘“semivestidos’? and more recently by Galinat (10) as 
‘*papyrescent.’’ Weatherwax’s (30) illustration of half 
tunicate is almost certainly that of a papyrescent ear. 
Mangelsdorf (13) once made a similar error but was for- 
tunate, as the result of test crosses, in discovering it be- 
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