12, and in my other tables. With respect to the average number of
seeds per capsule hardly anything need be said: supposing that the legitimately
fertilised capsules contained, on an average, 50 seeds, and the illegitimately
fertilised capsules 25 seeds; then as 50 is to 25 so is 100 to 50; and the
latter number would appear in the right hand column.
It is impossible to look at the above table and doubt that the legitimate unions
between the two forms of the above nine species of Primula are much more fertile
than the illegitimate unions; although in the latter case pollen was always
taken from a distinct plant of the same form. There is, however, no close
correspondence in the two rows of figures, which give, according to the two
standards, the difference of fertility between the legitimate and illegitimate
unions. Thus all the flowers of P. Sinensis which were illegitimately fertilised
by Hildebrand produced capsules; but these contained only 42 per cent of the
number of seeds yielded by the legitimately fertilised capsules. So again, 95
per cent of the illegitimately fertilised flowers of P. Sikkimensis produced
capsules; but these contained only 31 per cent of the number of seeds in the
legitimate capsules. On the other hand, with P. elatior only 27 per cent of the
illegitimately fertilised flowers yielded capsules; but these contained nearly
75 per cent of the legitimate number of seeds.
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