156 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



showing that the initial step towards atavic change took place in the 

 germ cell of every one of the first seeds produced on those southern 

 soils, and that the reversion was therefore sudden and aggregate. Mr. 

 Browne, who has business interests in Calapach island, which lies thirty 

 miles east of the Isle of Pines and eighty miles south of Cuba, also 

 informs me that there are now growing on that island tomato plants 

 which are four or five years old, they having changed from the condi- 

 tion of annual, to that of perennial plants in that tropical climate. 

 Furthermore, the fruit of those plants has changed from a good variety 

 of large size for the first fruitage to the cherry form and size before 

 mentioned for the later fruitages. 



These credible facts, gathered from widely different sources, 

 plainly indicate that various exciting causes of varietal fruit degen- 

 eration exist, but they throw little light upon the real nature of those 

 causes. The facts mentioned also indicate that many new oppor- 

 tunities are likely to arise for scientific agricultural experimentation 

 with the tomato. Our tropical and subtropical island possessions 

 will doubtless soon be called upon to supply, for our own and other 

 countries, the increasing demand for early tomatoes, just as northern 

 Egypt has been made the early tomato garden of Europe. My present 

 object in referring to these facts, however, is their application to the 

 second part of my subject. 



This second part pertains to phylogenetic plant mutation as dis- 

 tinguished from ordinary plant variation and the production of new 

 fruit varieties. The immediately following remarks embrace in nar- 

 rative form an account of two cases of saltatory plant mutation which 

 have fallen under my experimental observation. In the spring of 

 1898 I purchased a couple of dozen young tomato plants of the Acme 

 variety which had been germinated by a gardener near Washington, 

 D. C, and transplanted them, before any of their flower buds were 

 formed, in a garden plot of a few hundred square feet, upon my house 

 lot in the city. Short specific descriptions of these plants and their 

 progeny are given for the purpose of showing their differences. 



As the plants matured and fruited they were found to possess all 

 the characteristics of the Acme variety, and of typical L. esculentum. 

 They early became decumbent, and at full maturity they were large 

 and diffuse; the haulms, which were slender and somewhat numerous, 

 reaching a maximum length of more than two meters; color of the 

 foliage a comparatively light green; the petiole-midribs long and 

 slender; leaflets moderately narrow, distant, petiolulate, and their sur- 

 faces only slightly rugose; fruit of moderate size, usually depressed- 

 globular in shape, but sometimes transversely oval, uniformly ripened, 

 fleshy and well flavored, and in ripening the chlorophyl green changed 

 to a deep crimson through more or less of yellow. 



