XXll INTRODUCTION. 
great botanist, not only indirectly, but from his per- 
sonal research into the nature of monstrosities, did 
more than any of his predecessors to rescue them from 
the utter disregard, or at best the contemptuous indif- 
ference, of the majority of botanists. De Candolle gave 
a special impetus to morphology in general by giving in 
his adhesion to the morphological hypotheses of Goethe. 
These were no mere figments of the poet’s imagination, 
as they were to a large extent based on the actual 
investigation of normal and abnormal organisation by 
Goethe both alone, and also in conjunction with Batsch 
and Jaeger. 
De Candolle’s example was contagious. Scarcely a 
botanist of any eminence since his time but has con- 
tributed his quota to the records of vegetable teratology, 
in proof of which the names of Humboldt, Robert 
Brown, the De Jussieus, the Saint Hilaires, of Moquin- 
Tandon, of Lindley, and many others, not to mention 
botanists still living, may be cited. To students and 
amateurs the subject seems always to have presented 
special attractions, probably from the singularity of the 
appearances presented, and from the fact that in many 
cases the examination of individual instances of mal- 
formation can be carried on, to a large extent, without 
the lengthened or continuous investigation and critical 
comparative study required by other departments | of 
botanical science. Be this as it may, teratology owes 
a very large number of its records to this class of 
observers. 
While the number of scattered papers on vegetable 
teratology in various European languages is so great 
as to preclude the possibility of collatimg them all, 
there is no general treatise on the subject in the 
