56 



facsimile of the mounted specimen, the outlines having been traced 

 from the dried leaf and the venation reproduced by free-hand 

 drawing. The plate gives a reduction of one half natural size. 



Many leaves spanning more than four inches were found. The 

 one represented by Fig. 29 lacked a full half inch of spreading 

 half a foot from tip to tip. Figs. 1 and 36 are especially inter- 

 esting, perhaps the one showing the simple ancestral form and 

 the other an ambitious prefiguration of the future ideal. Figs. 

 19 and 39 have small and curious outgrowths on the margins. 

 Figs. 38, 40, 41, 42 and 43 are of special interest. Fig. 42 is 

 puzzling, and was taken from a plant showing normal leaves. 

 Some plants had but a single leaf with more than three lobes, 

 while others had leaves variously lobed. One plant had 3 five-, 

 1 six-, 1 seven-, 2 eight-, and 1 nine-lobed leaves ; another 3 

 five-, 4 six-, 1 seven-, 1 eight-, and 3 nine-lobed. 



The discovery of the particular locality where extreme varia- 

 tion occurred was too late in the season of 1902 to allow much 

 observation of the flowers. Among the few found, many varia- 

 tions were noted. Dioecious forms of flowers occurred frequently. 

 The pistillate flower was small and set in an overgrown involucre, 

 while staminate flowers were large and the involucre correspond- 

 ingly reduced. Fig. 44 shows the pistillate flower, and in the 

 same figure is depicted a tendency to lobing seen in few of the 

 sessile leaves of the involucre. Some flowers had four and five 

 leaves in the involucre, and Fig. 45 shows another tendency of 

 separation of flower and involucre. 



The variations illustrated by the accompanying figures are cer- 

 tainly pronounced. Whether they are sufficiently self-perpetu- 

 ating and sufficiently capable of segregation into definite groups 

 to be worthy of consideration as possible mutants in a de Vrie- 

 sian sense, the writer does not assume to say. 

 Burlington, Vermont, 



March, 1903. 



