CLASS 7. ILLEGITIMATE PLANTS RAISED FROM MID-STYLED PARENTS FERTILISED WITH POLLEN FROM THE LONGEST STAMENS OF THE SHORT-STYLED FORM. 32 : Mid-styled : 127.2 : 144 : 96 : 98. 33 : Short-styled : 113.9 : 137 : 90 : 137. The lessened fertility of most of these illegitimate plants is in many respects a highly remarkable phenomenon. Thirty-three plants in the seven classes were subjected to various trials, and the seeds carefully counted. Some of them were artificially fertilised, but the far greater number were freely fertilised (and this is the better and natural plan) through the agency of insects, by other illegitimate plants. In the right hand, or percentage column, in Table 5.30, a wide difference in fertility between the plants in the first four and the last three classes may be perceived. In the first four classes the plants are descended from the three forms illegitimately fertilised with pollen taken from the same form, but only rarely from the same plant. It is necessary to observe this latter circumstance; for, as I have elsewhere shown, most plants, when fertilised with their own pollen, or that from the same plant, are in some degree sterile, and the seedlings raised from such unions are likewise in some degree sterile, dwarfed, and feeble. (5/3. ‘The Effects of Cross and Self- fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom’ 1876.) None of the nineteen illegitimate plants in the first four classes were completely fertile; one, however, was nearly so, yielding 96 per cent of the proper number of seeds. From this high degree of fertility we have many descending gradations, till we reach an absolute zero, when the plants, though bearing many flowers, did not produce, during successive years, a single seed or even seed-capsule. Some of the most sterile plants did not even yield a single seed when legitimately fertilised with pollen from legitimate plants. There is good reason to believe that the first seven plants in Class 1 and 2 were the offspring of a long-styled plant fertilised with pollen from its own-form shortest stamens, and these plants were the most sterile of all. The remaining plants in Class 1 and 2 were almost certainly the product of pollen from the mid-length stamens, and although very sterile, they were less so than the first set. None of the plants in the first four classes attained their full and proper stature; the first seven, which were the most sterile of all (as already stated), were by far the most dwarfed, several of them never reaching to half their proper height. These same plants did not flower at so early an age, or at so early a period in the season, as they ought to have done. The anthers in many of their flowers, and in the flowers of some other plants in the first six classes, were either contabescent or included numerous small and shrivelled pollen-grains. As the suspicion at one time occurred to me that the lessened fertility of the illegitimate plants might