30 
Research Bulletin No. 4 
striped-flowered plants. It seems quite likely that had 
de Vries tested more red-flowered plants he would have 
found some of them to breed true. 
Correns's results with striped and red flowers of Mirab- 
ilis differed in one important respect from his results 
with variegated and green plants of the same species, as 
well as from the principal results with Zea reported here 
and from de Vries 's results with striped-flowered and red- 
flowered forms of Antirrhinum. "When red-flowered 
plants arose from striped-flowered varieties of Mirabilis, 
they behaved just as did the green plants that arose from 
variegated forms. But selfed seeds from wholly red- 
flowered branches of otherwise striped-flowered plants 
yielded little if any larger percentages of red-flowered 
plants than did selfed seeds from striped-flowered 
branches of the same plants. It would seem that in case 
of Mirabilis flowers, when the self pattern arises as a 
somatic variation from the variegated pattern there is no 
corresponding change in the Mendelian factors for these 
patterns. In case of seed-sports from variegated-flow- 
ered to red-flowered plants, however, the factors for vari- 
egation are affected just as in case of green plants arising 
from variegated ones and of red-eared maize plants aris- 
ing from variegated-eared ones. The apparently non- 
inherited somatic variations of maize plants, noted briefly 
earlier in this paper, are possibly of the same nature as 
the somatic variations in variegated flowers of Mirabilis. 
Some of these variations in maize are self-red cob patches 
on otherwise variegated cobs, and dark, variegated grains 
occurring in patches or scattered over light, variegated 
ears. 
General Considerations 
The experiments of de Vries, Correns, Hartley, and 
East and Hayes, as well as the records reported in this 
paper, all indicate that certain somatic variations are in- 
herited in strictly Mendelian fashion. All these somatic 
