THE SCENTED CALLA 



The primus blackberry, the phenomenal berry, 

 and the sunberry, are, if you wish so to consider 

 them, instances of pronounced mutation, inas- 

 much as they are fixed forms of plants that vary 

 widely from the parent forms. 



In a single row I can show walnut trees six 

 inches high that are of the same age with others 

 six feet in height, both grown from seeds of 

 the same tree. The Shasta daisy and the white 

 blackberry are mutants in the same sense. And 

 as the reader will discover in due course, the list 

 of such anomalies might be extended to tiresome 

 lengths. 



In a word, it is perhaps not too much to say 

 that my entire work has consisted in dealing with 

 mutations in plant life. My chief work might be 

 held, and I believe justly held, to be an exposition 

 of the truth of the theory of mutation insofar as 

 it applies to the explanation of the origin of 

 species. 



Over and over again, hundreds of times in the 

 aggregate, I have selected mutants among my 

 plants, and have developed from them new fixed 

 races. But in the vast majority of cases I knew 

 precisely how and why these mutants originated. 



They were hybrids; and they were mutants 

 because they were hybrids. 



And so from the outset I have believed that 



[97] 



