398 
Cooperative hivestigatiom on Plants 
actually developed plants ; the 92 which germinated of the free capsules gave 400 
actually observed plants *. The tabulation and calculations are due to Dr A. Lee. 
(G) Bushey Crop. Grown by H. Payne, but not I'ecorded owing to his 
appointment to the South African College. The bagged capsules, however, failed 
to give seed which germinated, while the free capsules gave a vei-y good crop. 
(H) Rusliden Crop. Grown by G. Abbott. Mr Abbott's time was so occupied 
by other matters during the flowering season that few records were made of the 
flowers, but the same result occurred in this sowing as at Bushey — the bagged 
capsules gave no germinating seed, the free capsules a plentiful supply. 
We may therefore conclude that while a plentiful supply of fertile seed is 
obtained when free capsules growing in the midst of a poppy crop are collected, 
practically no seed is obtained when we deal with bagged capsules, at any rate in 
seasons like 1903 and 1904. It seems reasonable therefore to infer that the 
Shirley Poppy is in the bulk cross and not self-fertilised -f, and we should accord- 
ingly expect in the resemblance of sister plants the intensity to approach what we 
are familiar with in other types of life as that of half and not whole siblings. We 
may remark that the observers noted continual visits of wasps, bees, and other 
insects to the crops. As far as could be determined from a careful examination 
of the unused bagged capsules of 1903, they presented no fertile seed whatever. 
(2) Nature of the Observations. 
A full crop consisted of 100 to 1-50 plots each sown with seed from a single 
pedigree individual plant. In each plot at a maximum ten and of necessity 
sometimes fewer individual plants were selected and the characters of their apical 
flowers observed. The characters were as follows : 
(i) Petals, (a) The number of petals, {b) The number of petaloid stamens. 
(ii) Number of stiginatic bands. These being counted at the periphery and 
not at the centre. 
(iii) Colour of the " middle tldrd " of the petals. This was recorded for one 
petal of the flower only, unless the petals were unlike, when the colours of both 
petal pairs were given. The colour categories used were : 
Red (?•). Pink-white (pw). White (iv). 
Red-pink (r^j). Veined-white {vw). Red-white {rw). 
Pink (p). 
If these beds had not been thinned, and if all the plants in some of the beds had been observed, 
there would have been far more, i.e. 400 represents the minimum, 9 the maximum fertility of the two 
groups. 
t Another, we consider fairly strong, argument in favour of wide cross-fertilisation can be found 
in the occurrence of poppies with dark pollen or dark basal patches. Such "rogues" occur where 
there is no trace of black in the maternal plant, but they generally appear as isolated units ; some- 
times, but rarely, two or three cases appear in a fraternity. If the whole fraternity were due to one 
pollen parent, they could hardly fail to be more frequent in the group. 
