The Climbing Habit in Antirrhinum majus. 287 
house they were caught again from the opposite side and swayed 
with a somewhat whirling movement against each other and the 
Shirley Poppies among which they were growing. Can it be that 
we have here a stimulus which induced the branches to twine round 
others for support ? or can it be that the previous period was one 
which Weismann would regard as a period of constancy and that 
now has come the period of changefulness ? We believed we had 
caught this Snapdragon in a “ changeful mood ” as Thompson puts 
it, and we decided to humour it. Meanwhile the plants were 
examined and typical examples collected and preserved. On 
examination of these it was seen that while the main axis showed 
no signs of climbing, tendrils were common on the lateral 
branches, while a feature of further interest was that the coils they 
formed were very variable, both in form, direction, and position on 
the branch. Text-fig. 34, A—E, show some of these found on the 
specimens in 1908, from which it would appear that while 
Text-fig. 34. Climbing branches of Antirrhinum showing some of the 
different positions on the branches where twining occurs. 
the plant had shown this strong tendency to produce branch 
tendrils it had by no means hit upon a single or definite method, 
the only constant feature being that the tendency appeared only 
in the secondary or later orders of branches. It showed no signs of 
twining in its main stem, unless the tendency to coil in the flowering 
portion of the axis, to be mentioned later, belongs to this category. 
