6 4 





period, up to indeed a comparatively recent date, the scientific 

 botanists refused to regard these " sports " as other than 

 Nature's mistakes, and it is only of recent years that the 

 science of Teratology became established as a particular 

 branch of study of these eccentricities, which was 

 gradually found to be of absorbing interest and fraught 

 with valuable lessons for the biologist generally. Out of 

 the data accumulated in this direction there sprang 

 naturally the desire to know the why and the wherefore of 

 the changes observed. Many were easily traceable to 

 interference with the normal course of development due to 

 insect influence, such as galls, or other damage, but such 

 divergencies always failed to be inherited by the offspring. 

 Many, on the other hand, could not possibly be imputed 

 to such origin, and as the great majority of the experi- 

 ments were conducted under artificial conditions of high 

 culture and in connection with plants already of complex: 

 pedigree, and consequently very variable in their offspring,, 

 due to varied parental potencies, the idea became more 

 and more strengthened that variation was always due to 

 some such departure from purely natural conditions, and 

 never occurred except when some " change of environ- 

 ment " took place, and in such case evidenced a sympa- 

 thetic response on the part of the plant in order to adapt 

 itself thereto. Clearly, in the study of natural phenomena 

 of this class, incomparably the best material for really 

 practical research is presented by plants growing under 

 entirely natural conditions, i.e. wild ones in their native 

 habitats, and therefore free from the thousand and one 

 disturbing influences inseparable from plants grown under 

 artificial cultural conditions, and already, as we have 

 stated, mostly of complex origin. Equally clearly, such 

 study is not so easy, since it involves a vast amount of 

 skilled and experienced research among the wild plants in 

 order to discover the comparatively very rare " sports"* 



