212 Observation of the Origin of Varieties. 



they all flowered in the first year, — 58 plants in all, of 

 which 45 were dicotylous and 13 tricotyloiis. Amongst 

 the dicotyls there were eleven plants, each of which bore 

 one, two, or three peloric flowers, while in one case a 

 peloric flower replaced a whole raceme. Amongst the 

 tricotyls I did not find any such flowers^, partly because 

 the majority of these were removed by the middle of 

 August; but there appeared amongst them one plant 

 which bore peloric flowers exclusively on all of its stems 

 and their branches. It bore no seed in spite of repeated 

 careful pollination, partly with pollen from the neigh- 

 boring plants ; it survived the winter and flowered freely 

 in the following year, again producing exclusively peloric 

 flowers. 



This experiment seemed to suggest that the Peloria 

 arose from the hemipeloric parent in a proportion of 

 about 1-2%. So in order to obtain closer knowledge of 

 this proportion, I made a larger sowing in 1896 from 

 the same lot of seed, and was able to plant out about 

 1850 seedlings in pots. By the middle of July some 

 wholly peloric individuals had appeared, which were 

 promptly taken up and transferred to a remote part of 

 the garden. The further examples of Peloria which 

 appeared from time to time, were planted beside them. 

 By the middle of August all healthy plants were in 

 flower and were recorded. There were altogether 16 

 totally peloric plants and 1759 with ordinary flowers, 

 and here and there occasional peloric structures. This 

 gives a total of 1775 plants which flowered, of which \% 

 (strictly speaking 0.9%) belonged to the new peloric 

 variety. 



For the harvest the flowers of the best peloric plants 

 were enclosed in parchment bags and each fertilized with 



