In several recent publications Blaringhem[18] has described the origin of many abnormal forms of plants, especially of maize, which he attributes to various mutilations practised upon the parents. Respecting these the same difficulty which has been expressed in other cases reappears, that before drawing any conclusion as to the value of such evidence we require to know that the plants treated belong to a really pure line, which if left to nature in the ordinary circumstances of its life in that locality would have had normal offspring. Abnormalities abound in the experience of everyone who examines pans of seedlings of almost any species of plant, and in maize they are well known to be exceptionally common. Some of those which we meet with when we attempt to ripen maize in this country are very similar to those which Blaringhem describes, consisting in irregularities in the distribution of the sexes, in the shapes of the panicles, etc. Many of these are doubtless imperfections of development, due to the dullness of our climate, but others are presumably genetic and would recur in the offspring however treated. If some one working in a climate where maize could be raised in perfection would repeat these experiments, and show that a strain which was thoroughly reliable and normal in its genetic behaviour did, after mutilation, throw the miscellaneous types observed by Blaringhem, that would be evidence at least that the development of the seed could be so influenced by injury to the parental tissues that its properties were changed. Such evidence could be used for what it is worth; but pending an inquiry of this kind I am disposed to regard these observations of variation following on parental injury as suggestive rather than convincing.