No. 551] INFLUENCE OF STARVATION 



673 



of growth of the ascendants upon the characteristics of 

 the descendants be demonstrated, it will be worth while 

 to determine the weight to be given to individual physical 

 and chemical factors in the ascendant environment. If, 

 on the other hand, there be no detectable effect of ances- 

 tral depauperization, then the cost of elaborate batter- 

 ies of experiments had better be devoted to some other 

 problem. 



This first study is based upon three varieties of one 

 species, Phaseolus vulgaris. The conclusions should not, 

 therefore, be extended to other forms with different de- 

 mands upon the soil, habits of growth or type of seed. 

 This is true not merely on general principles, but is espe- 

 cially important because of the well-known capacity of 

 this species for growth under adverse conditions. 



The characters considered are number of pods per 

 plant, number of ovules formed and number of seeds ma- 

 1 ner pod, ratio of total seeds ripened to total ovules 

 own— the coefficient of fecundity— and weight of 



astants are based upon the countings of number of 

 is and seeds in about 130,000 pods and weighings of 

 110,000 carefully selected seeds. But these obser- 

 ons were drawn from only 21,000 individual plants, 

 the results in the body of the paper show, these num- 

 bers are too small rather than unnecessarily large for 

 problem of this delicacy. I believe, however, that they 

 ;re sufficiently large to bring the probable errors of 

 random sampling low enough that dangers of erroneous 

 conclusions lie rather in the inevitable experimental 

 (and to a less extent observational) errors. 



Bearing in mind the difficulties to be surmounted and 

 the consequent possibilities of error, we draw the fol- 

 lowing tentative conclusions. 



Environmental conditions which greatly reduce num- 

 ber of pods per plant, number of ovules formed per pod 

 and number of seeds matured per pod, affect to a less 

 degree the relative number of seeds matured, i. e„ the 



