Kleinere Mitteilungen. 
Previous researches into some statistics of Cojfea. 
By P. C. van der Wolk (Buitenzorg). 
Eingegangen: 18. Dezember 1912. 
STE 
Fluctuating variability is an example of, how a phenomenon with 
originally only a general significance is brought back in the course of time 
as a particular and very specialized expression of nature moving, within 
narrow limits and of typical characteristic tendency; and of how an idea 
with no more than a chance tendency is altered into that of an actual 
limited palpable quality. 
Formerly, fluctuating variability was considered as an expression of 
chance and nothing more. The term “chance curve’” signified nothing more 
than is contained by the words taken in their narrow sense. Indeed it was 
very natural to find, that the leaves of a tree were not all of the same 
size. Next to a larger number of an average type, one could but expect 
smaller and larger forms. The organism was subjected to a natural pheno- 
menon such as existed outside that organism, and was not in any way 
inherent in the organism. 
By degrees, indeed, this view has been modified. In the first place 
the discoveries in the finer study of pure lines have contributed to this. 
It was of special importance to establish that the frequency curves of 
corresponding parts of pure lines, covered each other, and were perfectly 
like each other. This signified more than a mere matter of chance. The 
fact that a definite pure line for organs corresponding to each other 
rendered an approved specific curve of frequency, indicated that the plant 
itself also certainly played a part, that thus the fluctuating variability, or 
rather, a definite {luctuating variability seemed inherent to the life of 
plants. This conception has been still more strengthened of late years by 
the discovery that this fluctuation is also subject to Mendelian laws; and 
so the opinion has prevailed that we have nothing more nor less to perceive 
