174 Retrograde Varieties 



ing flowers with a uniform perianth and six 

 stamens, recalling thereby the supposed ances- 

 tral type. The way in which he got these was 

 as follows: he started from some slight devia- 

 tions observed in the flowers of the pale spe- 

 cies, sowed the seeds in large numbers and se- 

 lected from the seedlings only those, which 

 clearly showed anomalies in the expected 

 atavistic direction. By repeating this during 

 several generations he at last reached his goal 

 and was able to give reality to the prototype, 

 which formerly was only a hypothetical one. 

 The Iris kaempferi, a large-flowered Japanese 

 species much cultivated in gardens, is very vari- 

 able in the number of the different parts of its 

 flowers, and may in some instances be seen even 

 with six stamens. If studied in the same way as 

 Heinricher's iris, it no doubt will yield highly 

 interesting and confirmatory results. 



Many other instances of such systematic atav- 

 ism could be given, and every botanist can easily 

 add some from memory. Many anomalies, oc- 

 curring spontaneously, are evidently due to the 

 same principle, but it would take too long to 

 describe them. 



Reversion may occur either by buds or by 

 seeds. It is highly probable that it occurs more 

 readily by sexual than by asexual propagation. 

 But if we restrict the discussion to the limits 



