April, 1915.] The Inheritance of Size in Tomatoes. 
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FLUCTUATING VARIATIONS. 
Any quantitative character is subject to deviation from the 
average condition. According to the laws of chance these devia¬ 
tions are sometimes plus and sometimes they are minus, as a 
result of which they have been termed “fluctuating variations”. 
Quetelet has shown that all living structures vary and are always 
grouped about a mean. .In other words plus or minus deviations 
of increasing magnitude occur with diminishing frequency in such 
a way that a given population will be distributed, in a large part, 
at or near this mean or mode. Galton called attention to this 
same fact in another way when he stated that the offspring of 
parents with plus or minus variations are closer to the average 
than the parents. There are always certain limits of fluctuating 
variability beyond which the deviations do not extend. 
Since the fruit of the individual plants were found to be subject 
to these fluctuating variations in size, it was considered necessary 
to harvest a large number of fruits from two typical plants in 
