Five-leaved Clover 351 



to these come the fours and the sixes, while the 

 trifoliolate and seven-bladed types are nearly 

 equal in number. But out of a lot of plants, 

 grown from seed of the same parent, it is often 

 possible to choose some in which one extreme 

 prevails, and others with a preponderating 

 number of leaves with the other extreme num- 

 ber of leaflets. If seed from these extremes are- 

 saved separately, one strain, that with numer- 

 ous seven-bladed leaves will remain true to the 

 type, but the other will diverge more or less, 

 producing leaves with a varying number of sub- 

 divisions. 



Very few generations of such opposite selec- 

 tion are required to reduce the race to an 

 utterly poor one. In three years I was able to 

 nearly obliterate the type of my variety. I 

 chose the seedlings with an undivided primary 

 leaf, cultivated them and counted their off- 

 spring separately after the sowing. I found 

 some parents with only 2 - 3^ of seedlings with 

 divided primary leaves. And by a repeated 

 selection in this retrograde direction I suc- 

 ceeded in getting a great number of plants, 

 which during the whole summer made only 

 very few leaves with more than three blades. 

 But an absolute reversion could no more be 

 reached in this direction than in the normal 

 one. Any sowing without selection would be 



