394 Ever-sporting Varieties 



as 2.5 cub. cm. per square meter. On one of the 

 beds I left all the germinating plants untouched 

 and nearly 500 of them flowered, but among 

 them 360 were almost without pistillody, and 

 only 10 had full crowns. In the other bed I 

 weeded away more than half of the young 

 plants, leaving only some 150 individuals and got 

 32 with a full crown, nearly 100 with half crowns 

 and only 25 apparently without monstrosity. 



These figures are very striking. From the 

 same quantity of seed, in equal spaces, by sim- 

 ilar exposure and treatment I got 10 fully de- 

 veloped instances in one and 32 in the other 

 case. The weeding out of supernumerary indi- 

 viduals had not only increased the percentage 

 of bright crowns, but also their absolute num- 

 ber per square meter. So the greatest number 

 of anomalies upon a given space may be ob- 

 tained by taking care that not too many plants 

 are grown upon it : any increase of the number 

 beyond a certain limit will diminish the prob- 

 ability of obtaining these structures. The most 

 successful cultures may be made after the max- 

 imum number of individuals per unit of area 

 has been determined. A control-experiment 

 was made under the same conditions and with 

 the same seed, but allowing much less for 

 the same space. I sowed only 1 cu. cm. on my 

 bed of 2 square meters, and thereby avoided 



