Yellow-berry in Wheat 
17 
support the assumption of an increase after cutting, i. e., that the 
deposition of starch may continue for a time after cutting at the 
expense of material accumulated in the plant, but this would 
seem to apply to the protected as well as to the exposed wheat. 
After having written the above, I received a note from Prof. 
Kjeyser, a portion of which pertains to this subject and reads as 
follows: 
“It is stated in Bulletin 89 of the Nebraska Experiment Station that 
exposure to weather conditions, increases the amount of yellow-berry pres¬ 
ent in the grain. I think, perhaps, in view of a fuller experience with 
yellow-berry, that a slightly different statement of the facts observed 
would come more nearly to stating what actually took place. The bul¬ 
letin states that exposure increased the yellow-berry. What actually oc¬ 
curred seems to be, that exposure increased the readiness with which 
yellow-berry present was detected. In other words, exposure enabled 
us to see yellow-berry in cases where it was not visible in the bright, 
freshly thrashed, or freshly harvested grain. In other words, exposure 
enabled us to detect yellow-berry in those cases which were on or near 
the boundary line of yellow-berry and clear, corneous grain.” 
This leaves no doubt in my mind but that the apparent in¬ 
crease of the yellow-berry on exposure to the weather, was due 
not to the formation of the yellow spots in the grain, but that the 
effect of the bleaching was simply to reveal yellow-berry in many 
kernels in which it was not readily detected in their fresh, un¬ 
bleached condition. The continued deposition of starch after 
cutting, especially of grain not fully ripe, remains a possibility. 
The Kansas bulletin goes further and states: 
“The yellow-berry then appears to be distinctly a physiological 
growth product due to certain conditions thus far not clearly analyzed 
or satisfactorily explained.” 
After having studied the problem, in apparently all of its phys¬ 
iological phases, the conclusion of these investigators, Roberts and 
Freeman, is succinctly given in these words: 
“In view of the fact that but one head from each plant of the pedi¬ 
gree stock had to furnish the grains on which an estimate of the per¬ 
centage yield of yellow-berry in the plant as a whole was based, the result 
is really surprisingly confirmatory of our hypothesis that the yellow- 
berry is a ‘tendency’ which finds expression in certain strains or races 
more markedly than in others and is heritable.” 
This statement is the nearest approach to a formulated con¬ 
clusion, embodying the results of their extended experiments that 
I have found. This conclusion is positively opposed to that arrived 
at by Prof. Bolley in the Annual Report of the North Dakota Sta¬ 
tion for 1904, in which he states: 
