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THE AMEBIC AN NATURALIST [Vol. XLVIII 



the same analysis used with Zea and Mirabilis. Selfed 

 seed from striped-flowered branches gave a small per 

 cent. — from 2 to 10 — of red-flowered plants. Only a few 

 of the red-flowered plants were tested and these were 

 found to yield 76 per cent, red to 24 per cent, striped. 

 Selfed seed from red-flowered branches of striped-flow- 

 ered plants yielded 71 per cent, red-flowered and 29 per 

 cent, striped-flowered plants, approximating the 75 per 

 cent, and 25 per cent, indicated by Correns's results with 

 Mirabilis. None of these red-flowered plants bred true, 

 but only one test, and that of only a few plants, was made. 

 The results were 84 per cent, red-flowered and 16 per cent, 

 striped-flowered plants. It seems quite likely that had 

 de Vries tested more red-flowered plants he would have 

 found some of them to breed true. 



Correns's results with striped and red flowers of Mirab- 

 ilis differed in one important respect from his results 

 with variegated and green plants of the same species, as 

 well as from the principal results with Zea reported here 

 and from de Vries 's results with striped-flowered and red- 

 flowered forms of Antirrhinum. When red-flowered 

 plants arose from striped-flowered varieties of Mirabilis, 

 they behaved just as did the green plants that arose from 

 variegated forms. But selfed seeds from wholly red- 

 flowered branches of otherwise striped-flowered plants 

 yielded little if any larger percentages of red-flowered 

 plants than did selfed seeds from striped-flowered 

 branches of the same plants. It would seem that in case 

 of Mirabilis flowers, when the self pattern arises as a 

 somatic variation from the variegated pattern there is no 

 corresponding change in the Mendelian factors for these 

 patterns. In case of seed-sports from variegated-flow- 

 ered to red-flowered plants, however, the factors for vari- 

 egation are affected just as in case of green plants arising 

 from variegated ones and of red-eared maize plants aris- 

 ing from variegated-eared ones. The apparently non- 

 inherited somatic variations of maize plants, noted briefly 

 earlier in this paper, are possibly of the same nature as 



