THE FOUNTAIN OF CHANGE 241 
in the Evening Primrose of Hilversum, which, by 
the way, turns out to have been in the eighteenth 
century a wild species in North America. Three 
points may be emphasized. First, that some of the 
mutants which De Vries’s sportive CEnotheras threw 
off, as an artist might tear sketches from his note- 
book, were ephemeral failures, while others were 
viable and bred true, and could not be otherwise 
described than as species in the making, fingers 
searching, as it were, for their appropriate environ- 
mental glove. Second, in many cases the mutants 
were of particular interest because they showed 
through and through divergences—in leaf and 
stem and flower—certainly suggestive of some 
general disturbance of germinal organization. Just 
as if the @Enothera was born again! Third, that the 
creativeness or sportiveness of the Evening Prim- 
rose is not restricted to De Vries’s particular race of 
Cnothera lamarckiana. It occurs in other species 
of Evening Primrose, and also in snapdragon and 
barley, in strawberry and maize, in pomace-fly and 
potato-beetle, in rat and man himself, and so forth. 
Mutations may be induced experimentally, as 
Professor Tower did with his potato-beetles and 
as Mme. Henri recently did with the bacillus of 
anthrax, or they may manifest themselves in wild 
nature, as in the already mentioned Peppered Moth 
and Sugar-bird. The result may be a plus or a 
minus, a dominant or a recessive or neither, patho- 
logical or normal. The mutation may occur after 
crossing or in a pure race; it may show itself 
