555 
1879O Seed-Breeding. 
second, or first, counting downward, but never on the sixth, 
the seventh, or the eighth. We have not been able, so far 
as we have observed, to change the plant from a nine-noded 
one or less, through manure or any other process we have 
as yet tried. This method of structure has remained con- 
stant, because there has been no effort in the past by any 
one to produce variation, as no variation in this line has 
promised advantage or been brought to the attention. Yet 
we have been enabled to vary the grain, the shape of the 
cob, and the habit of growth, the most readily in those di- 
rections in which a practical usefulness could be seen. 
Indeed the teleological argument is a fitting one as between 
the plant and man. In other varieties of corn we find a 
different arrangement of parts, and as strictly defined in 
the variety as in the case given. Thus a variety grown in 
Tennessee contains sixteen nodes in all,' and the first ear 
appears on the fifth from the bottom, and on each inter- 
vening node up to and including the twelfth. Darling’s 
early sweet corn produces its ears near the ground, as a 
variety characteristic, as does also the Narragansett, and 
some pop-corns we have grown. In the Southern white 
corn, as grown for fodder in New England, the ears develop 
high up on the stalk. 
If we pass to intermediate characteristics, those which 
probably have been valued as a peculiarity of variety through 
many generations of culture, we find a fixity which is quite 
difficult to overcome except through successive efforts, if at 
all. Colour is perhaps the most prominent. Thus the red 
corn, occasionally cultivated here and there in New England, 
and which, although out of general culture, is tenaciously 
held on to by individuals, presents a fixity of type which 
overcomes in most instances the effeCf of hybridisation 
even in its colour. We know of instances where it is 
claimed for it that it does not receive hybridisation from 
other varieties of corn, because the colour continues, but a 
careful examination of those ears we have seen, and which 
have been grown among other corn, has shown an influence 
in the shape and quality of the kernel ; and if in a few 
cases the colour has changed, or become modified, this fa<5t 
but proves by its exceptional occurrence the fixity of the 
colour peculiarity. The red cob is another instance in 
point. We know that some growers place a value on this 
peculiarity, just as certain features of little real consequence 
have become valued in poultry by fanciers. We have known 
of instances where through hybridisation the colour of a 
kernel and the shape have become changed, while the cob 
