New York AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 361 
hand seeds of low specific gravity made considerable less vigor- 
ous germination, though very unequally so. This is most notice- 
able in the three lowest separates. In addition, as has already 
been pointed out, the percentage of germination among the seeds 
of higher specific gravity was high while the percentage among 
seeds of lower specific gravity was low. 
CORRELATIONS BETWEEN SPECIFIC GRAVITY OF 
SEEDS AND THEIR COLOR. 
Correlations have occasionally been noticed to exist between 
the specific gravity of the seed and its color. For instance. the 
purplish, immature seeds of grape which are often observed, 
especially in varieties imperfectly self-fertile, are almost always 
floaters or in a few cases have a specific gravity slightly above 
1.00. The dark colored seeds which are often seen in the Solan- 
ace, as in egg plant and pepper, are, so far as observed, always 
of low specific gravity and mostly floaters. In the case of the 
tomato a few brown seeds are high in specific gravity, but the 
numerical proportion of them to the whiter seeds rises very rap- 
idly as specific gravity decreases. 
The result of a germination test with pepper seeds of differ- 
ent colors (and sizes) is shown in the upper figures of Plate 
XVIT. 
The row at the extreme left (in both figures) was grown from 
large white seeds and contains twenty-one plants. In the next 
row, grown from medium sized white seeds, are sixteen seedlings. 
In the third row, from small white seeds, are eight seedlings. In 
the fourth row, from rather brownish seeds of various sizes, are 
ten seedlings, and in the fifth row, from dark colored seeds of 
different sizes, are five seedlings. In each case twenty-five seeds 
were planted in each row. The very differing vigor of growth 
in the different lots is shown in Fig. 1, and something of the 
very unequal germination in Fig. 2, which is another view of 
the same lot. It is seen that brownish seeds, irrespective of size, 
produce but little better seedlings than do small white seeds, and 
that the seedlings are inferior in vigor to those from medium 
sized white seeds. Further, dark colored seeds germinate very 
scantily indeed and produce very weak seedlings. Unfortunately 
