12 LUTHER BURBANK 



The glume, perhaps it should be explained, 

 is a bract that has no particular interest for any- 

 one except the botanist, but which may serve 

 admirably in checking the results of experi- 

 mental breeding. The glumes have practical 

 significance for the agriculturist, because their 

 character determines to some extent the readi- 

 ness with which the grain is shelled out in the 

 thresher. 



The interest in the different types of glumes 

 as to smoothness and of color, in the present con- 

 nection, centers about the fact that neither 

 parent showed dominance in the first generation 

 of the hybrid, the individual hybrids differing 

 indefinitely. 



In some cases there would be almost pure 

 dominance; in others a blend of the characters. 

 But in the second generation the characters were 

 segregated just as if they had shown the typical 

 phenomena of dominance and recessiveness in 

 the first generation. 



The third group of characters, in which there 

 was uniform blending in the first generation of 

 hybrids, with no tendency whatever to mani- 

 festation of dominance of one character over the 

 other, found representation in the following 

 pairs of unit characters: (1) lax ears versus 

 tense ears; (2) large glumes versus small 



