It relates to the
"Tuscarora" corn of St. Louis, a variety with broad and flat white
seeds.
About the year 1840, this corn was introduced into Baden in Germany, and
cultivated by Metzger. In the first year it came true to type, and [206]
attained a height of 12 feet, but the season did not allow its seeds to
ripen normally. Only a few kernels were developed before the winter.
From this seed plants of a wholly different type came the next year, of
smaller stature, and with more brownish and rounded kernels. They also
flowered earlier and ripened a large number of seeds. The depression on
the outer side of the seed had almost disappeared, and the original
white had become darker. Some of the seeds had even become yellow and in
their rounded form they approached the common European maize. Obviously
they were hybrids, assuming the character of their pollen-parent, which
evidently was the ordinary corn, cultivated all around. The observation
of the next year showed this clearly, for in the third generation nearly
all resemblance to the original and very distinct American species was
lost. If we assume that only those seeds ripened which reverted to the
early-ripening European type, and that those that remained true to the
very late American variety could not reach maturity, the case seems to
be wholly comprehensible, without supposing any other factors to have
been at work than those of vicinism, which though unknown at the period
of Metzger's and Darwin's writings, seems now to be fully understood.
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