214 Observation of the Oricjiii of J\v'ictics. 



to whellier the mutants are immediately constant from 

 seed. An almost insurmountable obstacle in tlie way of 

 providing an answer to this question is the low fertility, 

 or rather the almost complete sterility, of the peloric 

 flowers. Practically no results can be obtained with 

 self-pollination, and when artificially fertilized with one 

 another's pollen the majority of the flowers set no seed. 

 I have pollinated thousands of flowers in the course of 

 several years, only to obtain a little over one hundred 

 fertile seeds. Under these circumstances it is obviously 

 diflicult to avoid mistakes ; stray pollen grains may happen 

 to reach the stigma from distant groups of normal plants, 

 by the agency of insects, or in the operation of artificial 

 pollination.^ These circtimstances evidently tend to in- 

 validate the conclusion in cases in which the abnormality 

 would seem to be incompletely inherited. 



Only three of the wholly peloric plants of 1896 set 

 seed in that year. From this seed only 8 plants were 

 raised ; five of them had one-spurred flowers and 3 were 

 wholly peloric. I kept the peloric plants of 1896 through 

 the winter, and took much trouble in 1897 in the attempt 

 to fertilize their flowers. Every other day I pollinated 

 all the open flowers with pollen from two other seed- 

 parents. I obtained a very small quantity of seed most 

 of which was empty (0.2 cc). About 100 seeds ger- 

 minated, but some of the young plants were so weak 

 that they soon died. 79 plants flowered most of which 

 were Axry \-igorous and branched freely ; 75 were wdiollv 

 peloric, and 4 normal, the latter being removed as soon 

 as possible. The former exhibited great variability in 

 the structure of their flowers, but did not produce a 

 single one-spurred corolla. During July and August they 



^ Such crosses give normal one-spurred individuals. 



