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THE AMERICAN NATURALIST [Vol. XLV 



tion for high egg production; (b) a correlation between 

 the egg production of thirty-one individual mothers and 

 the egg production of their daughters, and the compari- 

 son of the egg production of these daughters with that 

 of a large number of pullets of unregistered female 

 parents. 



We note the following details: 



1. During the eight-year selection experiment 2 * some 

 unfavorable environmental accidents occurred in certain 

 of the laying years. The averages for these years are 

 perhaps too low, and both the actual means and a series 

 of corrected means are given. The corrected means 

 show an insignificant increase, but the unmodified means 

 show a pronounced decrease in mean number of eggs as 

 the result of the eight year selection. 



2. In correlating between the egg production of the 31 

 highly selected mothers and their 217 daughters there 

 is not trustworthy evidence of any relationship between 

 the fertility of the mothers and that of their daughters. 30 

 If these constants show any deflation from whatever 

 it is on the negative side. 



3. In comparing the daughters of these "200-egg" 

 lions with three other series of the same strain but not 

 of such highly selected female parentage, both for winter 

 and spring egg production, it is shown that in five cases 

 out of six the offspring of less highly selected parentage 

 are better layers than those of the less stringently se- 

 lected parents. 



Thus all three comparisons indicate that the high lay- 

 ing mothers tend to produce low laying daughters; se- 

 lection to increase egg production actually decreases it. 



