The Inheritance of Quantitative Characters in Maize 49 
dent plants, No. 833, indicated that they suffered more seriously 
from the dry weather than did the California pop plants. Many 
of the Missouri dent plants produced no ears and a considerable 
number of the ears produced were little better than "nubbins." 
The ¥ x plants, families 836 and 837, were apparently much less 
seriously affected by the unfavorable weather than any of the 
other lots, which doubtless, in part at least, accounts for the 
fact that their ears averaged quite as long as the ears of the 
Missouri dent parent. The mean ear lengths of the F 2 families 
were distinctly intermediate between the means of the parents. 
Altho the range of variation in the F 2 families was not extreme, 
the variability in F 2 , as measured by the coefficient of variation, 
was in general considerably greater than that of the F x families. 
