CHAP. VI. CROSSED AND SELF-FERTILISED PLANTS. 191 



fertilised plants being very short, and to one of the crossed being 

 very tall. 



Twelve flowers on these crossed plants were again crossed, and 

 eleven capsules were produced ; of these, five were poor and six 

 good; the latter contained by weight 3 '75 grains of seeds. 

 Twelve flowers on the self-fertilised plants were again fertilised 

 with their own pollen and produced no less than twelve capsules, 

 and the six finest of these contained by weight 2 '57 grains of 

 seeds. It should however be observed that these latter capsules 

 were produced by the plants in Pot HE., which were not exposed 

 to any competition. The seeds in the six fine crossed capsules 

 to those in the six finest self-fertilised capsules were in weight 

 as 100 to 68. From these seeds the plants of the next generation 

 were raised. 



Crossed and self-fertilised Plants of the Tfiird Generation. The 

 above seeds were placed on sand, and after germinating were 

 planted in pairs on the opposite sides of four pots ; and all the 

 remaining seeds were thickly sown on the two sides of a fifth large 

 pot. The result was surprising, for the self-fertilised seedlings 

 very early in life beat the crossed, and at one time were nearly 

 double their height. At first the case appeared like that of 

 Mimulus, in which after the third generation a tall and highly 

 self-fertile variety appeared. But as in the two succeeding 

 generations the crossed plants resumed their former superiority 

 over the self-fertilised, the case must be looked at as an anomaly. 

 The sole conjecture which I can form is that the self-fertilised 



TABLE LXXYIII. 

 Petunia violacea (Third Generation; plants very young). 



