Relative fertility of flowers crossed with pollen from A distinct plant and with their own pollen.  This heading includes flowers on the parent-plants, and on the crossed and self-fertilised seedlings of the first or A succeeding generation.

I will first treat of the parent-plants, which were raised from seeds purchased from nursery-gardens, or taken from plants growing in my garden, or growing wild, and surrounded in every case by many individuals of the same species.  Plants thus circumstanced will commonly have been intercrossed by insects; so that the seedlings which were first experimented on will generally have been the product of a cross.  Consequently any difference in the fertility of their flowers, when crossed and self-fertilised, will have been caused by the nature of the pollen employed; that is, whether it was taken from a distinct plant or from the same flower.  The degrees of fertility shown in Table 9/F, were determined in each case by the average number of seeds per capsule, ascertained either by counting or weighing.

Another element ought properly to have been taken into account, namely, the proportion of flowers which yielded capsules when they were crossed and self-fertilised; and as crossed flowers generally produce a larger proportion of capsules, their superiority in fertility, if this element had been taken into account, would have been much more strongly marked than appears in Table 9/F.  But had I thus acted, there would have been greater liability to error, as pollen applied to the stigma at the wrong time fails to produce any effect, independently of its greater or less potency.  A good illustration of the great difference in the results which sometimes follows, if the number of capsules produced relatively to the number of flowers fertilised be included in the calculation, was afforded by Nolana prostrata.  Thirty flowers on some plants of this species were crossed and produced twenty-seven capsules, each containing five seeds; thirty-two flowers on the same plants were self-fertilised and produced only six capsules, each containing five seeds.  As the number of seeds per capsule is here the same, the fertility of the crossed and self-fertilised flowers is given in Table 9/F as equal, or as 100 to 100.  But if the flowers which failed to produce capsules be included, the crossed flowers yielded on an average 4.50 seeds, whilst the self-fertilised flowers yielded only 0.94 seeds, so that their relative fertility would have been as 100 to 21.  I should here state that it has been found convenient to reserve for separate discussion the cases of flowers which are usually quite sterile with their own pollen.

Table 9/f.—­relative fertility of the flowers on the parent-plants used in my experiments, when fertilised with pollen from a distinct plant and with their own pollen.  Fertility judged of by the average number of seeds per capsule.  Fertility of crossed flowers taken as 100.