The valves of the inner pales, The valves of the inner pales not which adhere to the seeds, thick, not so coarse as in _A. fatua_, and covered with stiff hairs, and quite devoid of hairs. The especially towards the base. The outer valve with or without an external valve has a long stiff awn, which when present is not so awn, which in the ripe seed is stiff as in the wild plant, usually twisted at the lower part, sometimes twisted at the base, and bent at nearly right angles but seldom bent. Seeds large and at about the middle. The grain- full, forming the grain for which seed very small and worthless. the crop is cultivated. The experiments about to be detailed were performed with the _Avena fatua_. In 1851, a quantity of this plant was noticed by the author on the farm of C. Lawrence, Esq., near Cirencester. It was mixed with a patch of mangel-wurzel which had been planted for seed; and from these specimens sufficient seeds were preserved wherewith to sow one of our experimental plots. It should be noticed that the substratum was forest marble, and no doubt the seeds of the oat were brought with the manure by which the mangold patch was dressed. In the spring of 1852 a plot of two and a half yards square was sown with seed which had been kept during the winter—a fact which should be carefully noted, as it forms a first and most important link in the chain of evidence, and constituting what we term a cultivative process, inasmuch as in wild growth the seeds are sown as soon as they become ripe. The seeds of the first crop came up well, and on ripening, towards autumn, the plants were tall and robust; the grains presented a scarcely appreciable difference from the wild examples; if any, there may have been a slight tendency to an increased plumpness of grain. The seeds of crop No. 1 were again collected and preserved throughout the winter, and sown in a patch of similar size, but in a different part of the garden, in the spring of 1853, repeating the process with the successive crops in 1854 and 1855, with slight alterations from year to year, though in some examples the following tendencies seemed from the first to be gaining strength in some few of the specimens:— 1st. A gradual decrease in the quantity of hairs on the pales. 2nd. A more tumid grain, in which the pales were less coarse and the awn not so strong and rigid, and less black than in the wild example. 3rd. A gradual increased development of kernel or flower. The seeds of 1855 crop, without selection, were treated in the same manner during the winter, and were sown in the spring of 1856, the resulting crop in August of the same year presenting the following curious circumstances:— 1st. _Avena fatua_ (typical wild oat), with large loose panicles of flowers,[10] thin hairy florets, with a bent awn twisted at the base. Five parts of crop.