ON SOME UNTRIED EXPERIMENTS 



do with the crossing of a pink variety of pampas- 

 grass that bears both staminate and pistillate 

 flowers, with some of our finest large white varie- 

 ties. These plants crossed readily and I raised 

 many thousand seedlings. A large proportion of 

 the seedlings were plants bearing both stamens 

 and pistils like the pink parent. Very few were 

 female plants, and therefore bearers of good 

 plumes. 



Even when the plumes were produced, they 

 were usually not as large as those of the white 

 parent, and many of them were smaller even than 

 the small plume of the pink parent. This is easily 

 accounted for by the fact that the great white 

 plume has been produced through artificial selec- 

 tion, and therefore its characters were not as well 

 fixed as in the wild type. 



An interesting feature of this experiment was 

 that the pink color seemed to appear oftenest on 

 the staminate plants and not on those that bore 

 both stamens and pistils. 



This gives a suggestion of the element of sex 

 selection in heredity, which is seldom observed 

 in plants, although common enough among ani- 

 mals. A further evidence of this was seen in the 

 fact that I was never able to fix the color so 

 thoroughly on the female plants as on the male. 



The pampas-grass is multiplied by division, so 



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