LEAKE AND RAM PRASAD. 55 



plants and sown in 1910 as a collateral series which only differed 

 from the first in the one feature that the flowers had not in this case 

 been jjrotected. A third series was also grown from seed gathered 

 at the end of the hot weather, 1910, from the same parents which had 

 been transplanted and cut back early in the year. The second and 

 third series are those termed respectively ' ' early ' ' and ' ' late ' ' 

 series in Table V. The observations collated in this Table are lunited 

 to a record of the red sap colour of the vegetative parts of the plants 

 and of the flower colour. In the first series, from self-fertilised seed, 

 as in previous years, plants having the sap colour spreading to the 

 lamina have given pure red offspring only and, similarly, plants 

 in which the red colour is absent (foliage colourless or green) have 

 given coloui'less offspring only. In both the naturally fertilised 

 series, as Table V shows, a considerable number of impure forms 

 have occurred. Further the colour of these aberrant forms is, with 

 a single exception (not included in the above table as it appears to 

 be almost certainly the result of accidental mixing of seed), the 

 intermediate form, with the red colour only partially developed, 

 which is invariably produced when a pure red plant is crossed by one 

 in which the colour is absent. To pass to the flower colour, it has 

 been shown by numerous experiments that when full precautions 

 have been taken a white -flowered j^lant invariably breeds pure to 

 this character, but in these two series a certain number of yellows 

 have occurred which can only be the result of natural crossing. 



Confirmation, if such were needed, could be obtained from the 

 leaf factor, but in view of their somewhat tedious character, the need 

 did not appear to justify the expenditure of much time on the de- 

 terminations, which were only made in the case of those plants used 

 as parents and whose purity it was desirable to ascertain as far as 

 possible. A superficial observation, however, was sufficient to in- 

 dicate that numerous intermediate forms occurred among the off- 

 spring of plants which were pure in their leaf character. 



The difference in the percentage of impurity as given in Table 

 V for the two series is a matter of some interest. In one case only 

 does that figure for the late series exceed that for the early series, 



