The relationship between the variance and mean rate of discharges of simple cells in the cat striate cortex has been examined when mean rate was varied by changing either stimulus spatial frequency or contrast. In both cases, the variance was related to the mean discharge rate by an exponent of about 1.15; the relation was thus roughly linear. The discharge variance was on average 1.7 times the mean rate for data obtained from measurements of the neurones' spatial frequency tuning curves, and 1.48 times the mean for data from the response-contrast determination. However, this difference was not statistically significant.