Ranunculus Bnlbosus Serniplenus. 263 
out the plants which manifest the anomaly most abun- 
dantly and most strongly ; these must, however, according 
to the facts given, as a rule, be the best nourished ones, 
i. e., the most favored by their environment. l ; '>r on 
the same bed, even if it has been uniformly prepared with 
the greatest care, the conditions under which neighboring 
plants grow are often very different. One seed may 
germinate in a place in which moisture is better retained ; 
another may germinate in almost dry soil. Some germi- 
nate on warm and fine days and are in consequence ahead 
of their less favored brothers for their whole lives; and 
so on. 1 And so it is that the several plants from seeds 
of the same seed-parent sown on the same day and on 
the same bed, are necessarily exposed to diverse condi- 
tions of life. Amongst them selection picks out the best 
and therefore, at least as a general rule, the most highly 
nourished ones. Selection, so to speak, only precipitates 
the operation of these external factors ; as w r e have pointed 
out before in connection with Papa e'er somniferum poly- 
cephalum. 2 
Selection and cultivation have, therefore, worked in 
the same direction in my experiment for four genera- 
tions. They have about doubled the mean number of 
petals per flower, having brought it, in fact, to 9-10; 
they have produced, amongst several hundred plants and 
several thousand flowers, no more than three flowers with 
more than twenty petals (C 21, C 23 and C 31), i. e., 
not essentially more than would be expected according to 
OUETELET'S law from the actual mean and the amplitude 
of variation. These flowers occurred perfectly fortui- 
tously on plants which were not particularly favored oth- 
erwise, the means of the curves being only 10 for each 
1 See Vol. I, p. 138. 2 See Vol. I, p. 140. 
