44 s 



THE AMERICAN NATURALIST [Vol. XLIII 



sweet corn. 6 He points out that Correns has shown that the 



the formation of normal maize starch. 1 ^The presence and absence 

 of this starch forming ability behaves as an ordinary Mendelian 

 pair. The absence of the ability to form starch is the one char- 

 acter peculiar to the sweet corn group. It is shown that the 

 sweet corn may be either of the dent or the flint type in potential 

 hereditary characters, and suggests that the early history of 

 sweet corn indicates that it arose amongst the flints and spread 

 to the dents by hybridization. Dent corns tend to have from 

 12 to 28 rows ; flints usually have 8 and may have 12 rows as the 

 mode. Dents are little given to tillering, while tillering is char- 

 acteristic of flints. Flint varieties are also characterized by large 

 bracts at the end of the husks, dents by small bracts or none. 

 Sweet corn, on the other hand, runs the whole gamut of the above 

 characters. For instance, Stowell's Evergreen is a dent, having 

 16 to 24 rows. Golden Bantam and Black Mexican are flints. 



When the starch forming character is introduced into sweet 

 varieties from either dent or flint sources the dent or flint char- 

 acter of the sweet parent becomes evident. The author thinks 

 that the dent or flint character appearing in sweet corn is deter- 

 mined largely, but possibly not entirely, by the character pos- 

 sessed by the female parent. 



