“The first discovery of this locality was made in 1886. Afterwards I visited it many times, often weekly or even daily, and always at least once a year up to the present time. This stately plant showed the long-sought peculiarity of producing a number of new species every year. Some of them were observed directly in the field, either as stems or rosettes. The latter could be transplanted into my garden for further observation, and the stems yielded seeds to be sown under like control. Others were too weak to live a sufficiently long time in the field. They were discovered by sowing seed from indifferent plants of the wild locality in the garden. A third and last method of getting still more new species from the original strain was the repetition of the sowing process, by saving and sowing the seed which ripened on the introduced plants. These various methods have led to the discovery of over a dozen new types, never previously observed or described.” Some of these De Vries regards as varieties, in the sense in which he uses the words; others, he maintains, are real progressive species, some of which are strong and healthy, others weaker and apparently not destined to be successful. All these types proved absolutely constant from seed. “Hundreds of thousands of seedlings may have arisen, but they always come true and never revert to the original _O. lamarckiana_ type. But some of them, however, are, like their parent form, liable to mutations.” The case of the evening primrose is by no means an isolated one. De Vries cites several other instances of plants in a mutating state. “The common poppy,” he says (p. 189), “varies in height, in colour of foliage and flowers; the last are often double or laciniated. It may have white or bluish seeds, the capsules may open themselves or remain closed, and so on. But every single variety is absolutely constant, and never runs into another when the flowers are artificially pollinated and the visits of insects excluded.” Similarly the garden carnation sometimes gives rise to the wheat-ear form. “In this variety,” writes De Vries (p. 228), “the flower is suppressed, and the loss is attended by a corresponding increase in the number of pairs of bracts. This malformation results in square spikes, or somewhat elongated heads, consisting only of the greenish bracts. As there are no flowers, the variety is quite sterile, and, as it is not regarded by horticulturists as an improvement on the ordinary bright carnations, it is seldom multiplied by layering. Notwithstanding this it appears from time to time, and has been seen in different countries and at different periods, and what is of great importance for us, in different strains of carnations. Though sterile, and obviously dying out as often as it springs into existence, it is nearly two centuries old. It was described in the beginning of the eighteenth century by Volckamer, and afterwards by Jaeger, De Candolle, Weber, Masters, Magnus, and many other botanists.