1910] SHULL INHERITANCE OF SEX IN LYCHNIS 119 



I am not unmindful of their possible importance. The number 

 of offspring of this combination was too small to enable one to be 

 sure that these are not mutants which bear no necessary relation to 

 the fact that their mother was a hermaphrodite. It was found 

 particularly difficult to secure offspring of crosses of this type, as the 

 flowers were very often caused to drop off as a result of tfce process 

 of castration. Very often also in the flowers of hermaphrodite 

 plants the pistils are immature at the time the anthers are ready to 

 open, and after castration these pistils frequently develop no farther, 

 in which case there is no possibility of effecting fertilization. The 

 occurrence of these two hermaphrodite plants in no. 08116 offers a 

 further suggestion that the hermaphrodite character may be capable 

 of independent movement, and that consequently it may be carried in 

 some manner or to some degree by the female. This suggestion 

 especially commends itself from the fact that the occurrence of the 

 male and female organs on the same plant, as CORRENS (4) has 

 pointed out, constitutes in effect a mosaic, and it is well known that 

 mosaic inheritance is often dependent upon the presence of a definite 

 separate unit for the mosaic condition. If further investigation should 

 demonstrate that the hermaphrodite character may be transmitted 

 through the female, as is suggested by this one family, we will be forced 

 to the conclusion that here also the existence of a unit for the mosaic 

 condition is present. In whatever manner the male may be converted 

 into a hermaphrodite, the results seem to demonstrate that in Lychnis, 

 as in Bryonia, it is the male which is heterozygous and which carries 

 both male- and female-producing genes as concluded by CORRENS, 

 and not the female as assumed by BATESON. 



The demonstration that the hermaphrodite of Lychnis dioica 

 is a modified male indicates that STRASBURGER (n) was mistaken 

 in his interpretation of the effects produced by Ustilago violacea 

 upon this species. He believed that the infected plants were females 

 in which the development of stamens was stimulated by the attack 

 of the fungus. Instead of this it is probable that they were males 

 in which the disease somewhat lessened or modified the dominance 

 of the male character, thus allowing the female organs to develop; 

 or, if the female is a positive homozygote, the disease may be assumed 

 to have stimulated the single female gene or x element of the male 



