The Inheritance of a Somatic Variation in Maize 13 
Number of Plants 
Seeds Planted Red Ears White Ears 
Red 77 85 
White 0 122 
The white ears bred true in later generations and the 
red ears produced reds and whites in typical Mendelian 
fashion. No such somatic variations as these have oc- 
curred in my cultures of self-red or white maize, so that I 
have been unable to study them further. Somatic varia- 
tions in variegated corn, however, are not rare. Unfor- 
tunately several of the most pronounced of those occur- 
ring in my cultures were open-pollinated and therefore 
of little or no use in a careful study. I have therefore 
been obliged to make use in large part of the few solid 
red and nearly solid red grains scattered over otherwise 
more or less evenly variegated ears. 
From twenty-three self -pollinated, variegated ears of 
plants that were homozygous for pericarp color, grains 
with various amounts of red were selected and planted. 
The results are summarized as follows : 
Seeds Planted 
Number of Plants with 
Self-red Ears 
Variegated Ears 
Non-red Ears 
Self-red 
8 
9 

0 
56 
16 
0 
9 
34 
0 
5 
22 
0 
33 
394 
0 
Non-red 
1 
22 
0 
Besides these 23 ears, 20 other selfed ears from homo- 
zygous plants contained only narrow-striped seeds from 
which there were produced 16 plants with red ears, 280 
with variegated ears, and none with white ears. Similarly 
21 selfed ears with narrow-striped seeds only, from plants 
that were heterozygous for pericarp color, produced 28 
plants with red ears, 411 with variegated ears, and 208 
