uals, the hereditary materials which take part in character forma- 
tion, have descended from plant to plant through a single, 
unbroken line of ancestors. Thus they are to be regarded as 
blue bloods of blue bloods because of their freedom from mixture. 
Such an unbroken ancestral line, from the standpoint of heredity, 
should breed as true to type from seed as though it had been 
propagated by cuttings; or, to draw an illustration from the world 
of inert matter, the individual plants in each generation and from 
generation to generation should be as like each other, under the 
the same environment, and barring mutations, as small, equal- 
sized bits of pure rock salt broken off from a larger piece of the 
same mineral. 
Naturally, then, from what has been said, one might expect 
this ancestral line of plants growing about Alquiza to continue 
indefinitely to show these characteristics, these five-parted flow- 
ers, this round stem, and this small number of leaves, unless the 
environment was changed or mixture with other families of 
tobacco with different characters occurred. But in 1907 a single 
plant of a singularly new type appeared, a plant with abroad, flat 
stem, clothed with 152 dark-green leaves and crowned with pink 
flowers having from six to twenty floral parts in the three outer 
whorls, and from two to twenty-two floral parts in the gynoecial 
whorl. Thus appeared the first great recorded change in the 
character of this tobacco family. So far as the men who tended 
the fields knew, only one such mentioned plant appeared, and this 
one plant was found growing under practically the same condi- 
tions as the thousands of normal neighbor plants. Believing it 
to be of commercial value, one of the officials of the plantation 
had the flowers covered with bags, to make certain there would be 
no mixing, and seed was saved from it. The next year (1908) 
ninety-nine plants from this seed were grown under shade at 
North Bloomfield, Connecticut, and, although there was a wide 
range of variation in the number of leaves per plant, in the num- 
ber of parts per flower, and in the diameter of the stem, one could 
see in each of the ninety-nine the dominant traits of their single 
Cuban ancestor. In everyway they resembled that singular 1907 
plant rather than their so-called normal relatives. Thus a new 
and distinct variety having clear-cut characters arose. How it 
all happened no one has any conception, for it is one of those 
comparatively rare mutations, and no student of the genesis of 
organic life has as yet been able even to make a reasonable guess 
at the causes which bring about a mutation. From 1908 to 1914, 
five successive generations, aggregating 800 or more individuals 
of this strain were grown, and all expressed the same monstrous 
characters of the mutant ancestor, even though they had been 
grown at different times under a wide range of environmental 
