4i8 The Living Plant 



perfection by Darwin. The third is that of test through experiment, 

 of which we are witnessing the very beginning. Its great leader 

 is de Vries, an eminent Hollander still active in scientific service. 

 Some twenty years ago de Vries noticed in Holland a certain 

 weed, — an American Evening Primrose, called (Enothera Lamarck- 

 iana (note the coincidence of name!), — which showed such re- 

 markable phenomena of variation that he brought some of the 

 plants into his botanical garden where he could study their be- 

 havior with exactness. The result was remarkable indeed, for 

 he saw new kinds originating before his eyes, not by any slow 

 process, but the fastest that is physically possible, — viz., in 

 one step from parent to offspring. When seeds were taken from 

 the ripe pods of (Enothera Lamarckiana, and planted with pre- 

 cautions which precluded all possibility of error, most of the seeds 

 grew into plants like the parents; but some grew into a much 

 smaller kind, others into a much larger kind, and yet others into 

 other kinds, differing in other respects (figure 173). Thus from 

 the parent species several daughter kinds were produced, and not 

 once alone but regularly generation after generation. The new 

 kinds do not differ much from the parent, but enough to enable 

 trained botanists to distinguish them with certainty; and more- 

 over they differ not in one but in a great many features. The 

 individuals of any one of these new kinds exhibit minor, or fluc- 

 tuating, variations among themselves it is true ; but they preserve 

 throughout a sufficiency of definite characters in common. Fur- 

 thermore, and this is a matter of the very greatest importance, 

 when seeds of each of the daughter kinds were planted by them- 

 selves, they reproduced each their own kind, and that not alone 

 for one generation, but for several, and indeed for as many as 

 time has allowed since their discovery. Finally, the same ex- 

 periments have been repeated elsewhere, and with identical re- 

 sults. There seems no doubt, therefore", that this species of 

 Evening Primrose is actually giving off several new kinds year 

 after year, and kinds which reproduce themselves permanently. 



