100 



White. 



distinguished from the normals grown under the same conditions. So 

 far as this race is concerned "atavists" in the de Vriesian sense do 

 not exist. And when abnormals and normals are grown under certain 

 specific identical environments, my experience gives me reason to believe 



there will alwaj'S be the same deci- 

 ded features by which to distin- 

 guish them. 



4. Fasciations and selection. 



In a former paper (White, 1913) 

 the statement was made that the 

 fasciated character of the 300 — 309 

 race did not seem any more amenable 

 to selection than the race of cocks- 

 combs with which de Vries worked. 

 In other words, from two generations 

 of selection for normalness, no effect 

 seemed to be apparent, so the attempt 

 for the time, was given up. The exact 

 data on which this conclusion rests 

 were by no means conclusive. The 

 results obtained were clearly enough 

 interpreted, but the experiment was 

 not of long enough duration, nor 

 detailed enough to furnish any but 

 indicative data. In 1909, East selec- 

 ted one of the most abnormal and 

 one of the least abnormal plants of the 

 fasciata race cultures grown at Bloomfield to be selfed. 301 — 1 is the 

 pedigree number of the least abnormal, and that of the most abnormal 

 plant is 303 — 1. Both the parents were shade-grown plants raised by 

 Dewey. The parent of 301—1 had 64 leaves, that of 303—1, 

 133 leaves. East took no definite data on the number of leaves of 

 301 — 1 and 303 — 1, but remarks in notes that 303 was the most 

 abnormal of all the eight families grown in 1909. The leaf count 

 varied between 40 and 100. The plant selected as 303 — 1 was one of 

 the most abnormal of its family. Plants from selfed seed of these two 

 strains were grown in 1910 side by side at the Bussey Institution. 

 Table 4 shows the individual variation of each plant in the number of 



Fig. 15. 



