INHERITANCE OF WAXY ENDOSPERM IN MAIZE. 79 
0.316, which is slightly in excess of five times the probable error. 
The correlation of 0.45 is rather close to the expected 0.57 where a 
plant heterozygous for two color factors is self-pollinated, but the 
percentage of white seeds, 21.9, precludes this explanation. 
Fortunately another ear borne on the same plant was pollinated 
by a plant grown from a homozygous white waxy seed. If ear No. 
1796, deviating from the expected correlation of 0.766 by five times 
the probable error, represents but a chance fluctuation from this 
correlation, then the first ear of this same plant should, when crossed 
with white waxy, produce an ear with a correlation approximating 
0.8. The ear representing this cross is ear No. 1795. (Table 
XXXIX.) The correlation found was 0.387+0.05, certainly not an 
approximation of 0.8. These correlations show that the two ears of 
the plant were pro- 
ducing the same ex- 
cess of gametes 
bearing colored 
waxy and white 
horny genes. The 
relations of these 
ears are shown in 
figure 11. 
Since the male 
parent of ear No. 
1795 was a homozy- Ped 1VI6 SOS 
gous recessive, the 
zygotic ratio ob- Fig. 11.—Diagram rae es Miata of ears Nos. 1796 
served on this eur 
is also the gametic ratio of the female gametes within the range of 
chance fluctuation. 
To determine the gametic ratio of this ear as accurately as possi- 
ble the sum of the two reduplicated groups was divided by the sum 
of the nonreduplicated groups and the gametic ratio found to be 1.5 
to 1, or 3 to 2. The expected correlation on an ear the result of 
self-pollinating a plant with the gametic ratio of 3—-2-2-3 is 0.517. 
Ear No. 1796 is the result of self-pollinating the plant which bore 
ear No. 1795 with the above gametic ratio. The observed correlation 
on ear No. 1796 is 0.45, which deviates from a 0.517 correlation by 
0.067 +0.063, the deviation being insignificant. The plant, then, 
which produced ears Nos. 1795 and 1796 may with propriety be con- 
sidered as having formed gametes in the proportion of 8-2-2-3, 
while the majority of ears with a correlation have been shown to 
approximate the gametic series 3-1-1-3. 
The adherents of the linkage theory would look upon this de- 
parture from the expected as a mutation of the locus of one or both 
