This bulletin is concerned with subjects which belong to the field rather than to the garden, but we cannot refrain from speaking of some interesting notes upon cross-fertilization and variation of maize. Mr. Hays has in all instances found an immediate effect of fertilization in corn. This effect is easily seen when corns of different colors are used. His most interesting record is an account of the offspring of a supposed accidental cross between a yellow flint and a black sweet corn. On some ears six or seven kinds of corn were produced, ranging all the way from white to red, yellow and black, and from flint to sweet corn. The white and red colors did not exist in the immediate parents, and Mr. Hays supposes them to be reversions to some ancestor or to some previous cross. The laws of plant variation are so little known that the source of the characters can not be determined in this case, but there is apparently no reason to invoke atavism to account for them. Species and varieties often "break " when their characters are disturbed by violent crossing, and we do not know that the apparently new characters which are obtained are apt to be ancestral.

Conifers for Kansas Corn Crosses.