The fleshiness or pulpiness of the roots is still more variable. Some are as thick as the arm and edible, others are not thicker than a finger and of a woody composition, and the structure of this woody variety is very interesting. The sugar-beet consists, as is generally known, of concentric layers of sugar-tissue and of vascular [69] strands; the larger the first and the smaller the latter, the greater is, as a rule, the average amount of sugar of the race. Through the kindness of the late Mr. Rimpau, a well known German breeder of sugar-beet varieties, I obtained specimens from seed of a native wild locality near Bukharest. The plants produced quite woody roots, showing almost no sugar tissue at all. Woody layers of strongly developed fibrovascular strands were seen to be separated one from another only by very thin layers of parenchymatous cells. Even the number of layers is variable; it was observed to be five in my plants; but in larger roots double this number and even more may easily be met with. Some authors have distinguished specific types among these wild forms. While the cultivated beets are collected under the head of _Beta vulgaris_, separate types with more or less woody roots have been described as _Beta maritima_ and _Beta patula_. These show differences in the habit of the stems and the foliage. Some have a strong tendency to become annual, others to become biennial. The first of course do not store a large quantity of food in their roots, and remain thin, even at the time of flowering. The biennial types occur in all sizes of roots. In the annuals the stems may vary from [70] erect to ascending, and the name _patula_ indicates stems which are densely branching from the base with widely spreading branches throughout. Mr. Em. von Proskowetz of Kwassitz, Austria, kindly sent me seeds of this _Beta patula_, the variability of which was so great in my cultures as to range from nearly typical sugar-beets to the thin woody type of Bukharest. Broad and narrow leaves are considered to be differentiating marks between _Beta vulgaris_ and _Beta patula_, but even here a wide range of forms seem to occur. Rimpau, Proskowetz, Schindler and others have made cultures of beets from wild localities in order to discover a hypothetical common ancestor of all the present cultivated types. These researches point to the _B. patula_ as the probable ancestor, but of course they were not made to decide the question as to whether the origination of the several now existing types had taken place before or during culture. From a general point of view the variability of the wild species is parallel to that of the cultivated forms to such a degree as to suggest the multiple origin of the former. But a close investigation of this highly important problem has still to be made.