412 MR. W. AND MISS A. BATESON ON FLORAL VARIATIONS 
CONCLUSION. 
In the introduction to this paper it was stated that the facts 
to be given bore on the question of the origin of symmetrical 
irregular flowers; let us now consider what that bearing is. In 
making the remarks which follow, it must be distinctly under- 
stood that they are put forward, not as formal theory or doctrine, 
but as suggestions merely, and as indications of the direction in 
Which we must look if we hope to be hereafter entitled to formu- 
late such definite doctrines. 
It was pointed out that though modern scientific opinion has 
come to hold that the forms of living things have been built up 
by minute gradations, there is one preliminary objection to 
this view as applied to perfect mechanisms in general and to 
irregular corollas in partieular, namely, that there is no evidence 
as to the mode by which the process of building has been, or even 
might have been, carried out; for indeed we can hardly suggest 
or even conceive a way by which, in a concrete case, a perfect 
mechanism can have been compiled out of minimal changes. The 
objection holds, that these forms are in a sense perfect, and we 
cannot conceive them otherwise. On the other hand, there is 
the difficulty that it cannot be maintained that the progress of 
Evolution is from one perfect form to another perfect form, until 
evidence shall have been found showing that this process does 
occur as an actual phenomenon. The facts now given, though 
few, are a contribution io such evidence and, in our judgment, 
are a sample of the kind of fact which is required to enable us 
to deal with the problems of Descent. 
From each of the plants studied, truths of specific application 
may be learned ; but there is one fact which they all bring out 
together, and that fact, which is of fundamental importance to 
the right comprehension of the modes of Variation, is this :—(1) 
Variations which occur in such a manner as to produce a sym- 
metrical result may be great variations and may be perfect ; 
and conversely that (2) Variations which are large do often 
produce a symmetrical result ; and (3) that the perfection or 
completeness in which a variation in symmetry occurs is not, or 
at least need not be, proportional to the frequency of the occurrence 
0f the variation. 
In other words, there is evidence that perfect forms may occur 
as sudden variations. Hence,in any given case, of the actual 
