HOWARD AND HOWARD. 9 
Saunders,’ however, states that in some cases the F, generation 
is not always beardless, and that in the F, generation forms 
appeared exhibiting every variation between fully bearded and 
perfectly beardless types. In some of the crosses made at 
Lyallpur in 1907 between bearded and beardless parents, grown in 
pure culture from single ears, we found that the F, generation was 
not quite beardless. 
As might be expected from the hot and dry climate of 
India,’ the wheats of cultivation are usually bearded. These are 
preferred by the cultivators to beardless wheats, as they do not so 
readily shed their grain and can, therefore, be left standing at harvest 
time for some days after they are dead ripe—a practical point of 
some consequence where labour is scarce and dear at harvest time 
as in some districts of the Punjab. It is not likely that beardless 
wheats, will, on this account, be readily taken up by the ryots unless 
they possess obviously superior qualities to the bearded forms. 
2. CHAFF CHARACTERS. 
(a) Felted and smooth chaff—The chaft of wheat is either 
felted (covered with fine velvety hairs) or smooth. In fixed types 
these characters are exceedingly constant even to the degree of 
hairiness involved. In all our crosses up to the present where one 
of the parents has been felted, hairy chaff has proved to be a domin- 
ant character thereby confirming the previous observations of 
Tschermak,’ Biffen* and others. 
The degree of hairiness of the Indian types varies very greatly. 
The Punjab macaroni wheats are very densely felted and the hairs 
are long, whereas the glumes in the common and dwarf wheats are 
generally sparsely covered with short hairs. Type 9 of the Punjab, 
a common wheat, resembles, however, the Punjab macaroni wheats 
1 Report of the third International Conference on Genetics (1906). 
? Koernicke, 1. c. and Vilmorin, Les meillewrs Bles, Paris, 1880. 
3 Tschermak, |. c. 
+ Biffen, l. c. 
