No. 530] 



JEAN 21 ARCH ANT 



501 



These two new plants since have multiplied in a space 

 of seven or eight feet, and, which is astonishing, never 

 has Mons. Marchant been able to discover any signs of 

 seed npon them. At the same time the slight extent of 

 the plot npon which they reappear every year sufficiently 

 shows that they must have been derived from seeds which 

 probably fell npon it from preceding plants. Since some 

 time ago were discovered the secret means which sev- 

 eral plans make use of to hide their seed, it is all the 

 more marvelous that there still are some which can suc- 

 ceed in hiding them. 



But the principal reflexion of Mons. Marchant upon 

 these two plants is that it would not be impossible for 

 new species to be formed ; for these have all the appear- 

 ance of being such ; how else could they have escaped all 

 botanists? Art, culture and, still more, chance, that is 

 to say, certain unknown circumstances, every day bring 

 about novelties in interesting flowers such as the anem- 

 ones and buttercups, and these novelties are treated 

 by botanists as varieties only, which do not deserve to 

 change the species ; but why should nature be incapable 

 of novelties which went thus far? It seems she is less 

 constant and more diverse in plants than in animals, and 

 who knows the limits of this diversity? 



At this rate the old-time botanists would not have been 

 wrong in describing so few species in a single genus; 

 they were not acquainted with more, and it is time which 

 has brought new ones. For the same reason the future 

 botanists would be overwhelmed, and finally obliged to 

 abandon the species to limit themselves to the genera. 

 But ere forecasting that which will be, one must assure 

 oneself of that which is. 



Observations on the Nature of Plants 

 By Mons. Marchant" 



