Returning to the original plants of this race, it is evidently impossible to decide whether they were really the beginning of a new strain, and had originated themselves by some sudden change from the common type, or whether they belonged to an old variety, which had propagated itself perhaps during centuries, unobserved by man. But the same difficulty generally arises when new varieties are discovered. Even the behavior of the plants themselves or of their progeny does not afford any means of deciding the question. The simplest way of stating the matter therefore, is to say that I accidentally found two individuals of the "five-leaved" race. By transplanting them into my garden, I have isolated them and kept them free from cross-fertilization with the ordinary type. Moreover, I have brought them under such conditions as are necessary for the full development of their characters. And last but not least, I have tried to improve this character as far as possible by a very rigid and careful selection. The result of all this effort has been a rapid improvement of my strain. I saved the seed of the original plants in 1889 and cultivated the second generation in the following year. It [346] showed some increase of the anomaly, but not to a very remarkable degree. In the flowering period I selected four plants with the largest number of quaternate and quinate leaves and destroyed all the others. I counted in the average 25 anomalous organs on each of them. From their seed I raised the third generation of my culture in the year 1891. This generation included some 300 plants, on which above 8,000 leaves were counted. More than 1,000 were quaternate or quinate, the ternate leaves being still in the majority. But the experiment clearly showed that "four-leaved" clovers may be produced in any desired quantity, provided that the seed of the variety is available. In the summer only three, four and five leaflets on one stalk were seen, but towards the fall, and after the selection of the best individuals, this number increased and came up to six and seven in some rare instances. The selection in this year was by no means easy. Nearly all the individuals produced at least some quaternate leaves, and thereby showed the variety to be quite pure. I counted the abnormal organs on a large group of the best plants, and selected 20 excellent specimens from them, with more than one-third of all their leaves changed in the desired manner. Having brought my race up to this point, I [347] was able to introduce a new and far more easy mark, afforded by the seedlings, for my selections. This mark has since remained constant, and has brought about a rapid continuance of the improvement, without necessitating such large cultures.