316 Nutrition and Selection. 



\\'e shall here confine ourselves to true anomalies, 

 that is, to semi-latent characters,^ and will start with 

 some instances of plants which are propagated vegeta- 

 tively. First let us look at the continued growth at the 

 top of the inflorescence of the white clover (Fig. 60), an 

 anomaly which is fairly rare in this region, but which 

 has been intensified considerably by favorable cultivation 

 in my garden. Fig. 60 affords instances of this anomaly 

 selected from a vast number of available cases.^ Elonga- 

 tion of an inflorescence into an ear-shaped peduncle, pro- 

 liferation or formation of two inflorescences, one above 

 the other, on the same stem, and the appearance of small 

 clusters in the place of the individual flowers accompanied 

 by an increase of the bracts are some of the more impor- 

 tant instances. 



In the summer of 1890 I found near Hilversum a 

 specimen which bore a single flower on the elongated 

 axis of one of its inflorescences. I transplanted it to 

 my garden, sowed the seeds in the following year and 

 obtained a few "perumbellate" inflorescences. Again 

 I collected the best seeds and sowed them in 1891. When 

 the plants flowered about 2% of the several thousands 

 of inflorescences had proliferated, most of them belonged 

 to the type shown in Fig. 60 B, others to the rarer types 

 A, C and D. T then selected the best plant, isolated it 

 completely, and made certain that all the branches really 

 belonged to it. After this I divided it, planted out the 

 ])arts, and let them grow as strong as possible. In this 



^ The methods of cultivation suitable for producing pure white 

 flowers on colored varieties of Syn'nga in winter, and the well-known 

 blue coloration in the Horfensias are widely different. (See Verlot, 

 he. cit., pp. 60-61). 



^ The anomalies in question have long since been dealt with in 

 the literature of the subject, and have been collated by Penzig, in 

 Teratologie, I, p. 387. 



