THE ORIGIN OF RED BOBS 263 



selected head, (2) a 34-acre plot, the seeds for which were 

 obtained by mass selection, i. e., from a number of picked 

 heads threshed together, and (3) an increase plot of two or 

 three acres. It is important to note, on account of what 

 follows, that side by side with all these plots of Bobs 

 were similar plots of Early Eed Fife and of Preston, 

 and that these three wheats were the only kinds grown by 

 Mr. Wheeler in 1909. Again the Bobs plants appeared 

 to be quite uniform in character. 



In 1910, Mr. Wheeler again seeded Bobs in: (1) a 

 head-row plot, (2) a %-acre plot seeded as in the previous 

 year from hand-selected heads, and in (3) an increase 

 plot of several acres. The heads for seeding the ■54-acre 

 plot were obtained from the -J^-acre plot and also from 

 the head-row plot of 1909 ; and the increase plot of 2-3 

 acres was seeded from the seed resulting from the thresh- 

 ing of the %-acre plot of 1909. Mr. Wheeler examined 

 all the plants in the H-acre plot as carefully as he could 

 with the result that he discovered that a few of them, less 

 than a dozen, had red grains in all their heads instead 

 of white. Subsequently he detected a few red kernels 

 in the grain threshed from the large increase plot of 

 several acres. This was the very first appearance of any 

 marked variability which Mr. Wheeler had been able 

 to detect since the beginning of his study of Bobs. For 

 the sake of convenience, we shall now call the original 

 Bobs variety White Bobs and the red selection from it Bed 

 Bobs. Red Bobs, as we have just seen, was selected 

 from White Bobs in 1910. 



In 1911, Mr. Wheeler planted out the seeds obtained 

 from the red-seeded heads of 1910 in head-rows, each 

 head-row containing the seeds of a single head. The 

 plants which came up from these first red seeds at once 

 exhibited a remarkable amount of variability: some were 



