INTRODUCTORY 5 



allied species. Of such a phenomenon he gives illustrations the 

 authenticity of which he says he is, against his will, compelled to 

 admit. He adds that some might doubt whether in the cases 

 quoted the two forms concerned are really distinct species, but 

 the passage is none the less of value for it shews that the con- 

 ception of species as being distinct unchangeable entities was not 

 to Ray the dogma sacrosanct and unquestionable which it 

 afterwards became. 3 



In the beginning of the eighteenth century Marchant, 4 having 

 observed the sudden appearance of a lacinated variety of Mercu- 

 rialis, makes the suggestion that species in general may have 

 arisen by similar mutations. Indeed from various passages it is 

 manifest that to the authors of the seventeenth and early eigh- 

 teenth centuries species appeared simply as groups more or less 

 definite, the boundaries of which it was unnecessary to determine 

 with great exactitude. Such views w T ere in accord with the 

 general scientific conception of the time. The mutability of 



3 Ray's instances relate to Kales, and in most of these examples we can 

 see that there was no question of mutation or transmutation at all, but that the 

 occurrence was due either to mistake or to cross-fertilisation. Sharrock, to whom 

 Ray refers, was inclined to discredit stories of transmutation, but he has also this 

 passage (History of the Propagation and Improvement of Vegetables by the Concurrence 

 of Art and Nature, Oxford, 1660, p. 29) : 



" It is indeed growen to be a great question, whether the transmutation of a 

 species be possible either in the vegetable, Animal, or Minerall Kingdome. For the 

 possibility of it in the vegetable; I have heard Mr. Bobart and his Son often report it, 

 and proffer to make oath that the Crocus and Gladiolus, as likewise the Leucoium, 

 and Hyacinths by a long standing without replanting have in his garden changed 

 from one kind to the other: and for satisfaction about the curiosity in the presence 

 of Mr. Boyle I tooke up some bulbs of the very numericall roots whereof the re- 

 lation was made, though the alteration was perfected before, where we saw the 

 diverse bulbs growing as it were on the same stoole, close together, but no bulb 

 half of the one kind, and the other half of the other: But the changetime being past 

 it was reason we should believe the report of good artists in matters of their own 

 faculty." 



Robert Sharrock was a fellow of New College, Oxford. Both the Bobarts were 

 professional botanists, the father was author of a Catalogue of the plants in the 

 Hortus Medicus at Oxford, and the son was afterwards Curator of the Oxford 

 Garden. 



' Mem. Ac. roy. des Sci. for 1719 (1721), p. 59- 



