AMERICA'S CHIEF CROP 317 



Tracing Ancestral Forms and Habits 



The experiments that seemed demonstrative 

 as to this were made partly with the aid of a 

 primitive form of corn known as the single- 

 husked corn, Zea tunicata, of which I also re- 

 ceived specimens from Mexico. This I believe to 

 be the true primitive type of real corn — that is 

 to say, the first corn after advancing from the 

 original type of the teosinte. 



The seed of the half ear of fine yellow corn of 

 this primitive type that was received from Mex- 

 ico was planted. The plants that grew from this 

 seed showed the widest variation. Everyone 

 knows that the cultivated corn bears its pollinate 

 flowers or tassels at the top of the stem, and its 

 pistillate flowers marked by tufts of so-called 

 corn silk — and subsequently, of course, produc- 

 ing the ears — in the axils of the leaves far down 

 on the stalk. 



Teosinte bears small tassels at the top of each 

 stalk, and diminutive ones all along down the 

 stalk. But some of the plants of the single- 

 husked corn bore both tassel and silk together at 

 the top of the stalk. Others bore silk and tassel 

 mingled up and down the stalk, like teosinte. 



The ears of corn that developed sometimes 

 showed clusters of kernels of the size, shape, 



