228 The Pedigree f am Hies. 



through blooming, enclosed the inflorescence in a paper 

 bag; and, later, fertilized the flowers myself with their 

 own pollen. The plant set a quantity of seed ; the fruits 

 were short and thick, the seeds large. 



This plant was the parent of the new species O. gigas. 

 Its ancestors were at least for three generations ordinary 

 O. Lamarckiaiia. The new form arose without any inter- 

 mediate stages or previous warning; it is so striking 

 when in flower that it could not have been overlooked if 

 it had existed before. And it must be remembered that 

 the number of seed-bearing plants in each of the three 

 generations were respectively only 9, 6 and 10, and that 

 they were under continual and close observation. 



The self-fertilized seeds of the original plant of O. 

 gigas were sown separately in 1897. They gave rise to 

 somewhat over 450 plants. All of them proved to be 

 like their parent and constituted without any question a 

 type distinct, from the very outset, from O. Lamarckiana. 

 Only one plant did not conform to this type; it had all 

 the characters of O. gigas, but possessed the dwarf habit 

 of 0. nanella. It will henceforth be referred to as O. 

 gigas nanella. Not a single one of the 450 plants re- 

 verted to O. Lamarckiana. 



Lack of space prevented me from keeping more than 

 a quarter of this crop till the end of the summer. Many 

 stayed in the rosette stage, others produced stems and 

 flowered; all were pure O. gigas. I saved seed from 

 some of these plants whose flowers had been covered 

 with paper bags and self-fertilized. 



This experiment proves that this species was perfectlv 

 constant from its very first appearance. And it remained 

 so for the three subsequent generations.^ 



^ And afterwards, until now (Note of 1908). 



