126 Atavisiu. 



The result of this inquiry shows tliat the first eight 

 groups merge continuously into one another ; Init that 

 between the striped and red flowers a Ijroad gulf is lixed. 

 The red are not connected with the striped by a series 

 of transitional forms as the lemon yellow are with the 

 broad striped ; red flowers with small yellow patches may 

 occur, but they are at most very rare. 



The shape of the curves is far more regular than I 

 had anticipated; but the reds obviously have no place 

 in it ; I mean, they are far too numerous in proportion. 

 They are therefore obviously not the extreme variants 

 of the series but constitute a group which is perfectly 

 distinct from the striped although the size of this group 

 varies directly with the amount of striping in the other. 



After the composition of the commercial race had 

 been determined in this way, my next task was to dis- 

 cover the nature of the offspring resulting from the self- 

 fertilization of the individual components of this diverse 

 assemblage. I have confined the solution of this problem 

 to the three chief types: finely striped, coarsely striped, 

 and uniformly red. Let us begin with the two former 

 groups. 



The ofTspring of the parent plant A (Fig. 22 and table 

 on page 125) contained many coarsely striped individ- 

 uals (Fig. 22^) ; when they were in flower I transplanted 

 some very coarsely striped ones to a special bed, picked 

 ofiF all their flowers and young fruits and enclosed all 

 the buds which subsequently opened to insure self-fertili- 

 zation. Tn the same way I treated some plants from the 

 bed B (Fig. 22B) with almost yellow flowers. I har- 

 vested and sowed the seeds of each plant separately. 



In August, 1898, when the beds were in full flower, 

 T determined the amount of striping by the method al- 



