356 Ever-sporting Varieties 



the composites may be united into groups. 

 Many other instances could easily be given. 



If we select some of these anomalies for 

 breeding-experiments, our results will not agree 

 throughout, but will tend to group themselves 

 under two heads. In some cases the isolation 

 of the deviating individuals will at once show 

 the existence of a distinct variety, which is 

 capable of producing the anomaly in any de- 

 sired number of instances, only dependent on 

 a favorable treatment and a judicious selection. 

 In other cases no treatment and no selection 

 are adequate to give a similar result, and the 

 anomaly remains refractory despite all our en- 

 deavors to breed it. The cockscomb and the 

 peloric fox-glove are widely known instances of 

 permanent anomalies, and others will be dealt 

 with in our next lectures. On the other hand 

 I have often tried in vain to win an anomalous 

 race from an accidental deviation, or to isolate 

 a teratologic variety out of more common aber- 

 rations. Two illustrative examples may be 

 quoted. In our next lecture we shall deal with 

 a curious phenomenon in poppies, consisting in 

 the change of the stamens into pistils and giving 

 rise to a bright crown of secondary capsules 

 around the central one. Similar anomalies may 

 be occasionally met with in other species of the 

 same genus. But they are rare, and show the 



