BREEDING AND HEREDITY 7 



fruits shorter but stouter ; its stem thicker ; and its 

 petals broader, and consequently its buds fatter, than 

 those of the parent species. The top of the stem is 

 densely clothed with foliage ; and its appearance 

 forms a striking contrast to the naked look of the 

 top of the stem of 0. Lamarckiana. This feature 

 is due to the greater breadth of the leaves, to the 

 fact that they are bent downwards, and to the short- 

 ness of the internodes, especially at the extreme 

 top of the stem {see Fig. 3) in 0. gigas. 



Its first appearance was as follows. In 1895 

 there was a crop of about 14,000 plants, constituting 

 the fourth generation of the Lamarckiana culture. 

 All the mutational forms had been transplanted 

 from the crop, and most of the plants of 0. Lamarck' 

 iana had been thrown away. In the beginning of 

 August about 1,000 of these plants were in flower, 

 but many were still in the rosette stage. Thirty-two 

 of the strongest of these rosettes w^ere selected and 

 planted out ; they flowered in the July and August 

 of the following year. One of them attracted Prof, de 

 Vries' attention by its thick stem, and by its large 

 cup-shaped flowers. On August 10 all of its flowers 

 were picked off, both the open and the withered 

 ones, and the whole top of the plant enclosed in a 

 paper bag to ensure self-fertilisation. It set a quan- 

 tity of good seed. This plant was the parent of the 

 new species 0. gigas. Its ancestors, for at least three 

 generations back, were ordinary 0. Lamarckiana, 

 The numbers of seed-bearing plants in these three 

 generations were successively only nine, six, and ten, 



