208 ILLEGITIMATE OFFSPRING OF CHAP. V. 



of a long-styled plant fertilised with pollen from its 

 own-form shortest stamens, and these plants were the 

 most sterile of all. The remaining plants in Class I. 

 and II. were almost certainly the product of pollen 

 from the mid-length stamens, and although very ste- 

 rile, they were less so than the first set. None of the 

 plants in the first four classes attained their full and 

 proper stature ; the first seven, which were the most 

 sterile of all (as already stated), were by far the most 

 dwarfed, several of them never reaching to half their 

 proper height. These same plants did not flower at so 

 early an age, or at so early a period in the season, as 

 they ought to have done. The anthers in many of 

 their flowers, and in the flowers of some other plants 

 in the first six classes, were either contabescent or in- 

 cluded numerous small and shrivelled pollen-grains. 

 As the suspicion at one time occurred to me that the 

 lessened fertility of the illegitimate plants might be 

 due to the pollen alone having been affected, I may 

 remark that this certainly was not the case ; for several 

 of them, when fertilised by sound pollen from legiti- 

 mate plants, did not yield the full complement of 

 seeds ; hence it is certain that both the female and 

 male reproductive organs were affected. In each of 

 the seven classes, the plants, though descended from 

 the same parents, sown at the same time and in the 

 same soil, differed much in their average degree of 

 fertility. 



Turning now to the fifth, sixth, and seventh classes, 

 and looking to the right-hand column of the table, we 

 find nearly as many plants with a percentage of. seeds 

 above the normal standard as beneath it. As with 

 most plants the number of seeds produced varies much, 

 it might be thought that the present case was one 

 merely of variability. But this view must be rejected, 



