The Inheritance of Quantitative Characters in Maize 73 
true that a comparison of heights of the Missouri dent families 
grown in 1911 with the heights of the 1910 plants from which 
they came does not show the same effect noticed in case of the 
late F 3 families, but this is most likely due to the repeated 
selfing of the parent stocks. 
Early in the study of this cross it was foreseen that the great 
difference in earliness between the parents might introduce the 
complication discussed above, and an endeavor was therefore 
made to overcome the difficulty in later crosses by using as 
parents varieties that, while differing much in size, had practi- 
cally the same season of growth. The varieties chosen were 
Missouri dent, the same one used as tall parent in the cross 
already described, and California Rice pop. The latter is only 
a little taller than Tom Thumb pop and, while it ripens some- 
what earlier than Missouri dent, its time of blossoming and con- 
sequently its duration of growth are not appreciably different 
from Missouri dent. California pop also differs much from Tom 
Thumb in the number of nodes per stalk. In this respect it is 
very similar to Missouri dent. The difference in height between 
Tom Thumb pop and Missouri dent is largely a difference in 
number of internodes, while the difference between California 
pop and Missouri dent is largely one of internode length. (See 
Tables 31 to 34.) The one cross, therefore, supplements the other 
well in this study of the inheritance of height of stalks, since 
height is apparently merely a product of number of nodes and 
internode length. 
In Table 30 are brought together the available data derived 
from the cross between Missouri dent and California pop. As in 
the preceding table, the progenies grown in the same garden the 
same year are grouped together. Of the lots grown in 1910, No. 
353 is from selfed seed of a single plant of Missouri dent, 499 and 
500 are from selfed seed of two plants of California pop, and Nos. 
502 and 505 are from crosses of the parent plants of 499 and 500 
with the parent plant of 353. In this case, therefore, the F t 
generation is fully comparable with the parent generations grown 
the same year. In 1911, two families, 833 and 838, were grown 
to represent Missouri dent. They were from selfed seed of two 
plants of 353. Likewise two lots, 834 and 835, grown from selfed 
seed of two plants of 499. represent California pop. Nos. 830 
and 837 consisted of F 1 plants from the remnants of the same 
ears from which had been grown the previous year Nos. 505 and 
502 respectively. Nos. 829, 830, 831, 832, 839,' and 840 were F 2 
progenies from selfed seed of six different F t plants. 
The Fj lots of both years were almost as tall as the tall 
parent, which is in marked contrast to the intermediate F, plants 
