conditions, including’ changes in climate, in amount of rainfall and 
in soil and pot-culture conditions. In the latter case, the general 
plant dimensions were reduced by almost half, but the typical 
monstrous peculiarities were in evidence as much as ever. 
And such monstrous characters as they were ! Great flat stems, 
at times three inches or more across, curved at the crown into 
semblances of shepherd’s crooks or ram’s horns, or surmounted 
with great crowded clusters of pink flowers, flowers which had 
absolutely no regard for regularity, as shown by their great ex- 
tremes in number of floral parts among even the flowers of the 
same plant. Some flowers had 22 petals, others six, and there 
were even those which were joined together, honeysuckle fashion, 
in twos and threes and served by one calyx and one stem. Then 
there was sterility in various degrees, and broken tissue. For, 
often in growing to make the curves that simulated ram’s horns, 
the stems cracked, and great cell areas were deprived of life. 
Under the same conditions, often growing beside them, were cul- 
tures of from 10 to 125 normal plants similar to the ancestral for- 
bears of this monstrous strain. From generation to generation, 
they retained their old characters, their regularity in number of 
leaves and floral parts, their round stems and their fertility. 
What a contrast were they to this other strain with its 
irregularly placed leaves, and its great variation in leaf 
number per plant. For, not uncommonly seeds from a single 
capsule of the monstrous strain produced plants with 33 
leaves or with 133 leaves, and this was true even though all 
the plants were grown under approximately the same environ- 
ment. This great irregularity in the new strain is strictly heredi- 
tary. Attempts to reduce its variability through selection have 
so far resulted in failure, for seed from plants with 33 leaves are 
just as likely to produce plants with large numbers of leaves (100 
to 133) as plants with small numbers of leaves (33 or more). Thus 
we have two strains of tobacco, totally different in character, each 
breeding true, and both coming from a common ancestor, an an- 
cestor which possibly had had hundreds of generations back of it 
in a line unbroken by mixtures from related strains of tobacco, or 
even from single tobacco plants outside the direct line. One was 
terribly diseased, barely able to take care of itself under certain 
conditions, some of which were so favorable to the development 
of the monstrous characters that but few flowers and very little 
seed was produced, thus making the strain a poor competitor with 
other plants in the struggle for existence. On the other hand, 
the other or normal strain was in every way a much more success- 
ful straggler. 
When the monstrous strain was crossed with individuals simi- 
lar to the parent strain, the offspring from such matings were in- 
