20 
Research Bulletin No. 4 
eared plant, this one from a self-red grain of the varie- 
gated parent ear, bred true red in F 2 . One ear of this Fj 
plant was selfed and yielded 14 reds in F 2 , and another 
ear was cross-pollinated by non-red and yielded 29 reds. 
There are various other somatic variations rather fre- 
quently seen in maize, but they are apparently not in- 
herited. There are sometimes found variegated ears 
with a large patch of self-red cob but with little or no cor- 
responding change in the color of the overlying grains. 
I have as yet no evidence that this somatic variation in 
cob color is inherited through the seeds of the self-red 
part of the cob. Such seeds apparently always produce 
ears with variegated grains and variegated cobs, just as 
do other seeds of the same parent ear. Of course varie- 
gated seeds from a self-red patch of cob occasionally give 
rise to a self -red ear, as discussed in detail in this paper, 
and such red ears always have self-red cobs, but this is 
also true of all self-red ears, whether or not they are pro- 
duced by red or by variegated seeds and without respect 
to whether the part of the cob underlying these seeds is 
self-red, finely variegated, or entirely white. 
Another form of somatic variation seen in ears of maize 
is the occurrence of patches of considerable size, the 
grains of which, though variegated, are much darker in 
color than the grains of the rest of the ear. Such patches 
of grains are often quite as strikingly distinct in appear- 
ance as patches of self-red grains, and are apparently 
even more likely to correspond exactly in outline with an 
underlying patch of self-red cob than are patches of self- 
red grains. Moreover, such dark, variegated grains often 
present a rather definite color pattern. The crowns are 
often made to appear almost solid red by the widening 
and convergence at the crown of narrow red stripes ex- 
tending down toward the base of the grain particularly on 
the side opposite the germ. Another type of dark, varie- 
gated grains differs from the lighter, variegated grains 
