14] 
MISCELLANEOUS. 
Cases of Monstrosities becoming the starting-point of New Races in 
Plants. By C. Naupin. 
Tue discussion lately raised by MM. C. Dareste and A. Sanson 
upon the question whether monstrosities, in the animal kingdom, 
can become the origin of peculiar races, recalls to my memory some 
teratological facts which appear to me to show that this is the case 
in plants. Perhaps, however, in the first place, we ought to come 
to an understanding as to the sense to be attached to the word mon- 
strosity ; and to avoid all confusion I shall say that I employ it in 
the sense which is habitually given to it in botany, that of a notable 
deviation from typical or reputed typical forms. There is, in fact, 
a distinction to be made between cases of monstrosity incompatible 
with the faculty of reproduction by generation in the individuals 
affected by it, and those in which the alteration of form is not such 
as necessarily to imply the loss of this faculty. It is to the latter 
only that I wish to refer here, as they alone are in question. 
Well attested facts place it beyond a doubt, in my opinion, that 
considerable anomalies which, by general consent, are classed among 
the teratological facts of the vegetable kingdom are faithfully 
transmitted from generation to generation, and become the salient 
characters of new races. Horticulture would furnish a great number 
of these if the trouble had been taken to collect them and subject 
them to the check of experiment; but I can cite only a few, because 
they alone, as far as I know, have been examined scientifically ; and, 
moreover, they suffice to establish the principle of the transmission 
of anomalies by sexual reproduction through an indefinite series of 
generations. 
The first fact of this kind will be borrowed from Professor 
Goppert of Breslau. This was a poppy (Papaver officinale) which 
presented the curious anomaly of the transformation of a part of its 
stamens into carpels, from which resulted as it were a crown of 
secondary capsules round the normal central capsule, the develop- 
ment of which was nevertheless complete. One thing to be noted is 
that many of these small additional capsules, as well as the normal 
capsule, contained perfect seeds capable of reproducing the 
plant. In 1849, M. Goppert, having learnt that a whole field of 
these monstrous poppies existed a few miles from Breslau, sowed in 
the following year a considerable quantity of seeds taken designedly 
from the normal capsules; and nearly all the plants which sprang 
from this scwing reproduced the monstrosity of the previous genera- 
tion, although not all in the same degree. I do not dwell upon this 
first fact, because its observation was not, so far as I know, carried 
- any further, and it may be thought that the number of generations 
is not sufficient to justify our concluding from it the stability of the 
anomaly indicated. 
The same doubt does not exist with regard to the following facts, 
Cultivators of ferns know that these plants are very subject to vary, 
and that some of them, even in the wild state, present true mon- 
