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Darwin Correspondence Project

From E. L. Sturtevant   4 December 1879

So Framingham, Mass.

Dec. 4. 1879.

Charles Darwin, F.R.S. etc.

Dear Sir;

I wish to communicate to you briefly the result of an experiment in selection which I do not remember to have seen tried before: selecting in opposite directions.

This spring I planted my corn (maize) field with corn carefully selected for the best. I also planted a small lot with seed of the worst character. The result was:-

1. {30012 Bus.1 of ears, of which 9 bus. were defective or about 3 per cent.

2 {181 ears, of which 179 were defective or 99%.

The appearance of the field and the plot offered as great contrast in the grain or earing as the figures show, but in the fodder growth there was no observable difference.

Please not feel it necessary to acknowledge receipt, as I know your time must be very much called upon.2

Sincerely yours | E Lewis Sturtevant

CD annotations

0.1 So] ‘South’ added above ink

Footnotes

Bus.: bushel.
No reply to this letter has been found. Sturtevant had also written to CD about maize in his letter of 12 January 1878 (see Correspondence vol. 26). For Sturtevant’s later experiments with crossing maize, see the second part of Sturtevant 1894.

Bibliography

Sturtevant, Edward Lewis. 1894. Notes on maize. Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club, 20 August 1894, pp. 319–43; 24 December 1894, pp. 503–23.

Summary

Observations on maize.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-12341
From
Edward Lewis Sturtevant
To
Charles Robert Darwin
Sent from
Framingham, Mass.
Source of text
DAR 177: 270
Physical description
ALS 1p

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 12341,” accessed on 23 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-12341.xml

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