LINNEAN SOCIETY OF LONDON. XVH 



stance, mainly owing, as some pretend, to the frequency of hybrids, 

 or to our having attempted to define as species races as yet too 

 closely allied to have become fixed ? These and similar questions 

 may be well worth the attention of botanists resident in the country, 

 who have leisure for observation supported by experiment. 



Teratology, the investigation of abnormal or monstrous develop- 

 ments, including everything which in the form, structure, or course 

 of life in an individual differs from what is generally observed in 

 its race or species, has acquired considerable importance in the 

 consideration of questions of homology of organs, as well as in 

 that of affinities, descent, and supposed atavism. In animals, 

 monstrous productions have been chiefly treated pathologically 

 or physiologically, or as mere objects of curiosity ; but in vege- 

 tables abnormities are so frequent, and appear so often subject 

 to general laws, that they have attracted much attention on the 

 part of philosophical naturalists. There are few botanists who 

 have not, on some occasion or other, recorded instances which have 

 come under their observation. Continental botanical periodicals 

 are full of notices, more or less descriptive or speculative, on 

 vegetable anomalies ; and in our own more recent publications we 

 have several interesting papers on the subject, by Dr. Masters 

 and others. The value of these records of facts, independently of 

 the confidence to be reposed in the observer, depends on their 

 novelty, that is, their difference from what has been authentically 

 established in analogous cases, or on their bearing upon diver- 

 gences of structure liable to doubt or discussion. Every new ob- 

 servation ought therefore to be carefully collated with analogous 

 instances already on record, and for this a general work on the 

 subject is indispensable The best I am acquainted with is the 

 late Professor Moquin-Tan don's 'Elemens de Teratologic Vege- 

 tale,' a work little known in this country, but now added to our 

 library. It was the result of a great deal of research, carried on 

 for several years, and the subject is generally well methodized and 

 clearly put. It was published, however, so far back as 1841 ; and 

 there is much in the general principles enounced which recent 

 biological investigations would considerably modify. It were 

 much to be desired that some one of our Fellows, who, like Dr. 

 Masters, have devoted much attention to the subject, would under- 

 take a remodelling of the work, suited to the present more advanced 

 stage of vegetable biology. 



Metamoephism, or the history of the changes, abrupt or con- 

 tinuous, of the phases of life or stages of development which the 



LINN. PROC. — YOL. YIII. i 



