EXPERIMENT STATION REPORT. 371 



the opportunity was taken for a study of this subject. The 

 method adopted is the simplest, consisting of the isolation of 

 flower buds from all their fellows by means of paper bags and 

 making a record of the results. For ease of computation and 

 to insure a working basis for any possible conclusion, the num- 

 ber of instances in each case was limited to not less than one 

 hundred in eggplants, tomatoes and morning glories, and fifty 

 in daturas. 



The preliminary work of exclusion is not particularly tedious, 

 but needs tO' be done with much care, or else in many instances a 

 second bud, still quite small, may be overlooked and the instance 

 be not above suspicion. In tomatoes, for example, two or three 

 buds may bloom so nearly simultaneously that only the most 

 careful work at this point in the test is effective. The check upon 

 accuracy that is found in the presence of two fruits forming 

 when only one is intended and thus nullifying the particular in- 

 stance, should not be relied upon, for all flowers in a cluster do 

 not necessarily produce fruits. 



The test is easy with eggplants, as here the flowers are large, 

 but few in a cluster and simultaneous blooming not the rule 

 among flowers of the same inflorescence. Morning glory flowers 

 are so large and the buds so conveniently placed as to render 

 the experiment easy at the start. 



Eggplant Exclusion Experiment. 



From the one hundred flowers employed for the exclusion ex- 

 periment, ten fruits resulted, varying from three to six inches in 

 length. Five of these, and averaging equally large with the other 

 five, were seedless. The seeds of the latter were not counted but 

 they were not one-tenth as numerous as in those following nor- 

 mally situated flowers. 



This test of very limited extent suggests that eggplant blooms 

 are not, as a rule, close-fertilized, and also that fruits of market- 

 able size may be produced that contain no mature seeds, a fact 

 that is not new, but one that has its bearing upon the subject of 

 seedless vegetable fruits. 



