It would appear that the self-fertilised descendants of Hero have not
only inherited from Hero a power of growth equal to that of the ordinary
intercrossed plants, but have become more fertile when self-fertilised
than is usual with the plants of the present species. The flowers on the
self-fertilised grandchildren of Hero in Table 2.16 (the eighth
generation of self-fertilised plants) were fertilised with their own
pollen and produced plenty of capsules, ten of which (though this is too
few a number for a safe average) contained 5.2 seeds per capsule,--a
higher average than was observed in any other case with the
self-fertilised plants. The anthers produced by these self-fertilised
grandchildren were also as well developed and contained as much pollen
as those on the intercrossed plants of the corresponding generation;
whereas this was not the case with the ordinary self-fertilised plants
of the later generations. Nevertheless some few of the flowers produced
by the grandchildren of Hero were slightly monstrous, like those of the
ordinary self-fertilised plants of the later generations. In order not
to recur to the subject of fertility, I may add that twenty-one
self-fertilised capsules, spontaneously produced by the
great-grandchildren of Hero (forming the ninth generation of
self-fertilised plants), contained on an average 4.47 seeds; and this is
as high an average as the self-fertilised flowers of any generation
usually yielded.
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