The Origin of Clirysaiitlicmiiiii Scgcluiii Ploiiini. 185 



This 66-rayed plant was the first of my race to betray 

 the fact that it contained the much desired double char- 

 acter. From this moment the attainment of my object 

 was assured. 



The six first "double" inflorescences referred to, had 

 about 40-50 ray-florets around their circumference and 

 moreover one to three in the disc. But as they flowered 

 too late to ripen seeds, I have photographed and pre- 

 served them (Fig. 33). 



Unfortunately this plant gave but a poor harvest, 

 producing only 31 plants with terminal flowerheads. A 

 curve representing these heads is given in Fig. 32 under 

 1900. The number of observations is of course much 

 too small to furnish a proper curve or to justify the draw- 

 ing of conclusions as to its maxima. On the whole, 

 however, the figure indicates a definite advance over the 

 earlier years, and this advance is especially expressed in 

 the fact that amongst this small number there were two 

 plants which far outstripped all previous ones in the 

 number of their ray-florets. Their terminal inflorescences 

 contained respectively 99 and 101 rays, whereas the next 

 maximum expected would be 34 -|- 55 = 89. 



"Doubling" now appeared quite suddenly in full de- 

 velopment in this culture (Plate II). For convenience 

 of reference I shall call the white ligulate florets situated 

 amongst the little yellow tube florets, "disc-tongues." 

 These disc-tongues were now (juite common. From no 

 single plant were they completely absent if attention was 

 paid to both the terminal and lateral flowerheads. But 

 their numl)er was subject to a high degree of fluctu- 

 ating variability. As a rule flowers with less than 40 

 rays had no disc-tongues, and the number of these in- 

 creased with the total number of the outer ravs. For 



