300 Journal of Agricultural Research voi.x. no.6 



On the Fj plants the awns are present only occasionally, being borne 

 by the spikelets of the lower whorls. The awns are weak and straight, 

 with no basal portion. The appearance of the awn, as will be seen 

 more distinctly in the Fg plants, is limited by the nature of the glume 

 that bears it. 



The character of pubescence appears in the Fj plants more distinctly 

 than with the Victor parent. The base of the firmly hulled and inter- 

 mediately hulled kernels bears at its sides a fairly thick tuft of hairs. 

 Since the pubescence on the grain of the Victor parent occurs only in 

 the form of a few hairs, it would appear that the intensifying of the 

 pubescence of the Fj plants is possibly due to the influence of hybridiza- 

 tion. The part which the other parent, Avena nuda, might possibly play 

 in the augmentation of the pubescence can not be easily determined, 

 as its kernels are naked, and, hence, offer no chance for the pubescence 

 to develop. This point will be referred to later in connection with the 

 discussions of the character of pubescence in the second-generation 



plants. 



SECOND GENERATION 



The four F^ plants furnished seed enough to raise a considerable 

 number of Fg plants in 191 6. The second generation comprised 854 

 plants, all of which were examined for the characters discussed above. 



A. — HUIvL CHARACTER 



With reference to the hull characters the Fj segregation presents a 

 variety of forms, among which at least six types can be distinguished. 

 Two of these types represent the parental forms. Plate 43, B, shows 

 the typical naked form from the Fg generation. A comparison of this 

 figure with figure B of Plate 39 shows a slight difference in the appear- 

 ance of the two types, owing to the fact that in the naked forms from the 

 Fj generation the pedicels are often somewhat shortened, which causes 

 the spikelets to appear more contracted than in the case of the naked 

 parent. The multiflorous character of the naked forms of the F3 genera- 

 tion is in several cases also modified in the direction of a reduction of the 

 number of flowers per spikelet, pentaflorous spikelets being confined 

 mainly to the top of the whorls, while the other spikelets contain only 

 four or three flowers. This condition is very pronounced in some plants 

 where the biflorous spikelets with naked kernels prevail over the multi- 

 florous spikelets. A few plants were even found where, except for a few 

 top spikelets with three or seldom four kernels all spikelets are biflorous, 

 with two naked kernels per spikelet. These plants look much like a 

 normal biflorous oat (PI. 42, .4). This is interesting to note, as it shows 

 that the correlation between the multiflorous character and nakedness 

 of the kernels is not complete. 



The second Fj type to be described contains the plants with fully 

 hulled grain. This type is much simpler and more uniform than the 



