318 LUTHER BURBANK 



color, and general appearance of the Kaffir corn. 

 Others bore long tassels with numerous kernels. 



By selection among these different types, I 

 have been able to develop races of corn that, I am 

 confident, represent the primitive type, running 

 back to the form of teosinte, and thus clearly 

 enough demonstrating the origin of the plant 

 that occupies so important a place among the 

 present day farm crops, even if the abundant 

 evidence had not already been developed by my 

 own experiments. 



In the course of a few generations of selective 

 breeding I had a race of descendants of the 

 single-husked or tunicate corn, three-quarters of 

 the individuals of which produced kernels only 

 at the top of the stalk. By further selection a 

 race could readily be produced that would bear 

 its kernels exclusively in this location. 



As a rule the plants that thus produce kernels 

 at the top of the stalk produce no ears in the 

 ordinary location, although a few generations 

 earlier they had produced the grain about equally 

 in the two locations. 



The chief interest of the experiment lies in the 

 demonstration that our cultivated corn, which 

 now shows the anomalous habit of bearing its 

 pollinate flowers only at the top of the stalk and 

 its fruit on the main stem below, was originally 



