470 Mutations 



selected seeds in a pan in the glasshouse of my 

 laboratory and planted them out as soon as the 

 young stems had reached a length of some few 

 centimeters. Each seedling was put in a sepa- 

 rate pot, in heavily manured soil. The pots 

 were kept under glass until the beginning of 

 June, and the young plants produced during 

 this period a number of secondary stems from 

 the curious hypocotyledonous buds which are so 

 characteristic of the species. These stems 

 grew rapidly and as soon as they were strong 

 enough, the plants were put into the beds. 

 They all, some twenty specimens, flowered, or 

 at least nearly all of them, in the following 

 month. 



I observed only one peloric flower among the 

 large number present. I took the plant bearing 

 this flower and one more for the culture of the 

 following year, and destroyed all others. These 

 two plants grew on the same spot, and were al- 

 lowed to fertilize each other by the agency of 

 the bees, but were kept isolated from any other 

 congener. They flowered abundantly, but pro- 

 duced only one-spurred bilabiate flowers during 

 the whole summer. They matured more than 

 10 cu. cm. of seeds. 



It is from this pair of plants that my peloric 

 race has sprung. And as they are the ancestors 

 of the first closely observed case of peloric mu- 



