. Bulletin. Natural history; Science. the evidence against the Tripsacum hypothesis was substantial. He now proposes an alternate hypothesis, to be presented in his forthcoming book on corn and its relatives, which he has kindly permitted me to see in manuscript form. His new proposal assumes that the oldest corn found in archaeological sites was wild and was the ancestor of modern corn. Further, he believes that wild corn antedated the teosintes, which he now proposes were derived from this wild corn by mutation. This is indeed a dramatic reversal, for prior to this new view he maintained tha
. Bulletin. Natural history; Science. the evidence against the Tripsacum hypothesis was substantial. He now proposes an alternate hypothesis, to be presented in his forthcoming book on corn and its relatives, which he has kindly permitted me to see in manuscript form. His new proposal assumes that the oldest corn found in archaeological sites was wild and was the ancestor of modern corn. Further, he believes that wild corn antedated the teosintes, which he now proposes were derived from this wild corn by mutation. This is indeed a dramatic reversal, for prior to this new view he maintained that teosinte and corn were so different that teosinte could not have been ancestral to corn. If corn could have given rise to teosinte, the reverse must also be possible—and I would say much more probable, for teosinte is a highly successful wild plant and corn is not. These earliest archaeological specimens which Professor Mangelsdorf postulates as wild corn he assumes to have dispersed their seeds in part by virtue of a fragile cob. There seems to be a curious inconsistency in this view. If these earliest archaeological specimens were wild corn and had brittle cobs, how could they have survived harvesting, transportation to the caves where they were found, shelling of the kernels, mixing with other debris on the cave floors, plus being tramped on before being covered with the protecting layers of soil that preserved them to become archaeological specimens? If the cobs were indeed brittle, this would indicate teosinte ancestry. If they were not brittle, I fail to see how they could possibly have been wild corn, for how then would they have disseminated their seeds? LeII to right: a "spike" of pure teosinte, a teosinte-like hybrid, teosinte with tunicate gene introduced, and a primitive type of corn- all approximately Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and
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