1912. 



PUBLIC DOCUMENT — No. 31. 



85 



Table I. — Coefficients of Heredity. 

 Vine Length. 



The plants grouped as Eirst of All are from a lot of commer- 

 cial seed of the variety bought in the open market. They were 

 first grown in 1907, but the seed from individual plants was not 

 saved separately until the fall of 1909, so that no coefficients 

 of heredity are available except for the crops of 1910 and 1911. 

 The number of plants of this group grown each year is in the 

 vicinity of 700. The method of choosing seed plants is as fol- 

 lows: In the fall of 1908 seed from every tenth plant was saved, 

 a special effort being made to make the tenth plant a random 

 choice. In the following year the seed of one plant, chosen at 

 random from the descendants of each of these tenth plants, has 

 been saved for planting. In this way the number of plants 

 has been kept fairly constant. 



The same remarks will apply to the group Excelsior 11. , ex- 

 cept that the number of plants has been greater, varying from 

 800 to 1,200 each year. 



The groups called Excelsior I. and Variety '" C " are both 

 from the same lot of commercial seed, originally as Excelsior 

 IT., but these are descended from 10 plants selected in the fall 

 of 1907, the seed of each being saved separately. In the spring 

 of 1908 the seed of each of these plants was sown separately and 

 227 plants grown therefrom. The seed of each of these was 

 separately saved and grown in 1909, resulting in 1,770 plants. 



