780 Fluctuations 



the same. The repetition is only an easy meth- 

 od of getting more widely deviating extremes ; 

 whether it has, besides this, another effect, re- 

 mains doubtful. In order to be able to decide 

 this question, it is necessary to repeat the selec- 

 tion during a series of generations. In this 

 way the individual faults may be removed as 

 far as possible. I choose an experiment of 

 Fritz Miiller, relating to the number of rows 

 of grains on the ears exactly as in the case 

 above referred to, and repeated it in my exper- 

 imental garden at Amsterdam. 



I started from a variety known to fructify 

 fairly regularly in our climate, and exhibiting 

 in the mean 12 - 14 rows, but varying between 8 

 and 20 as exceptional cases. I chose an ear 

 with 16 rows and sowed its seeds in 1887. A 

 number of plants were obtained from each of 

 which, one ear was chosen in order to count its 

 rows. An average of 15 rows was found with 

 variations complying with Quetelet 's law. One 

 ear reached 22 rows, but had not been fertilized, 

 some others had 20 rows, and the best of these 

 were chosen for the continuation of the experi- 

 ment. I repeated the sowing during 6 subse- 

 quent generations in the same way, choosing 

 each time the most beautiful ear from among 

 those with the greatest number of rows. Un- 

 fortunately with the increase of the number the 



