NEW CREATIONS IN PLANT LIFE 
much longer time. . . . I would not put the 
question if it were not of so great importance 
in the study of etiology. It is very closely 
connected with the question whether one 
must accept a slowly merging in one another 
of species, or that one produces the other by 
jumps. (The pith of DeVries’ Mutationis 
theorie.) In the first place, small deviation 
would increase in the course of the genera- 
tions, and long series of intermediate forms 
would connect the new with the old. In the 
second case, however, the jump would be 
made at once, without any intermediates.” 
This was written in California by DeVries 
before he left for his home in Holland, and 
the very night following his visit to Mr. Bur- 
bank. He had long advocated the mutation 
theory earnestly, as elsewhere noted, but in 
the results of Mr. Burbank’s vast experiments 
he was confronted with facts he had never 
known before. Hence the following: 
“So long as there were no_ sufficient 
examples of this manner of change and we had 
to rely upon spontaneous varieties in horti- 
culture, the first proposition was the most 
probable. It rested upon several experiences 
222 
