116 proceedings of the academy op [1885. 



Aprtl 21. 

 Mr. Thomas Meeiian, Vice-President, in the chair. 

 Twenty-seven persons present. 



Persistence in Variations Suddenly Introduced. — Mr. Thomas 

 Meeiian remarked that some public notice had been given to his 

 observations on Gypripedium insiyne (see page :;0 of the Proceed- 

 ings, 1885), and hence correspondents had written to him of similar 

 behavior in this plant. A correspondent at Lee, Mass., had 

 plants that had subspicate flowers last year ; and one from 

 Sharon, Western Pennsylvania, wrote that Mr. O'Brien of that 

 place had a plant that produced such flowers four years ago, and 

 the same plant had produced them annually ever since. There 

 could be very little of what is understood by the term environ- 

 ment to so ailed one plant that it should change in this manner 

 any more than other plants growing under the same condi- 

 tions of environment ; and when we found the same species 

 producing identical variations in localities two or three hundred 

 miles apart, the application of the term environment had abso- 

 lutely no meaning at all. We must still continue to search for 

 some power that gave law to the production of variation — in 

 other words, we had yet no comprehensible theory of the origin 

 of species. That new species owed allegiance to the power of 

 variation must be admitted, for these variations were species. 

 The subspicate inflorescence and accompanying changes in the 

 forms of the flower, were specific characters. We had no right 

 to undervalue the characters because we happened to know the 

 parentage. The form once produced had the hereditary character 

 of a species. It had endured for four years. By analogy with 

 similar changes in other plants, we were justified in assuming that 

 it would reproduce itself indefinitely from seeds, as it had done 

 by offsets ; and again we had the recognized character of a 

 species. 



The most interesting deduction, however, from the facts now 

 presented, was that it is not necessary to assume that every 

 species sprang from one parent form, and from this one centre of 

 origin spread by long lapses of time over a wide extent of country. 

 We see that identical forms may appear simultaneously in locali- 

 ties widely separated ; and, the circles meeting, cover a district in 

 a comparatively short time. There would, of course, still have to 

 be explained how the original forms from which these modern 

 variations sprung, first had such a wide distribution, but that was 

 a question which must wait for its own facts to properly solve. 

 This difficulty could not invalidate what we saw must be a truth, 

 that in these modern times new and identical forms do appear 

 simultaneously in widely separated localities. 



