4U4 Tricotyloiis Races. 



gether, and planted out under the same average treat- 

 ment on the same bed and on the same day. About 140 

 plants set seed abundantly. 



On the average, however, this culture was not better 

 than those of the previous years, for it only yielded a 

 ratio of 4.5%; but the range of variability was much 

 greater. Eight plants occurred, the hereditary coefficients 

 of which exceeded all previous ones. Of these, six were 

 14 to 17%, one 21%, and one 25%. Here the possibility 

 of a sudden advance seemed to open up. 



Before I give the whole series of figures, I wish to 

 make one further observation. If in the year 1897 I 

 had not cultivated 450 plants, but only, let us say, one- 

 third, I would have limited myself to the offspring of 

 the grandparent with 5.5%, although the value is only 

 apparently greater than the other, because the difference 

 lies within the limits of observational error. I would 

 then have obtained precisely the same result with only 

 one-third of the labor. In other words, neither the se- 

 lection of tricotyls as seed-parents, nor the attention paid 

 to the hereditary values, although this excludes the poor- 

 est tricotyls in spite of the latitude of possible errors, 

 can make the experiment independent of chance. Noth- 

 ing less than carrying out the experiments on a much 

 larger scale can effect this. But the results of the two 

 following generations will show that even in the present 

 very favorable case, no real or permanent advance was 

 effected. 



The values obtained, in the spring of 1898, for the 

 140 offspring of the best parent of 1895, which itself 

 had a value of 5.5%, are distributed as follows: (P 

 refers to the figures in percentages and A to the cor re- 



