It is only necessary to have a plant in
a mutable condition. Not all species are in such a state at present, and
therefore I have begun by ascertaining which were stable and which were
not. These attempts, of course, had to be made in the experimental
garden, and large quantities of seed had to be procured and [27] sown.
Cultivated plants of course, had only a small chance to exhibit new
qualities, as they have been so strictly controlled during so many
years. Moreover their purity of origin is in many cases doubtful. Among
wild plants only those could be expected to reward the investigator
which were of easy cultivation. For this reason I have limited myself to
the trial of wild plants of Holland, and have had the good fortune to
find among them at least one species in a state of mutability. It was
not really a native plant, but one that had been introduced from America
and belongs to an American genus. I refer to the great evening-primrose
or the evening-primrose of Lamarck. A strain of this beautiful species
is growing in an abandoned field in the vicinity of Hilversum, at a
short distance from Amsterdam. Here it has escaped from a park and
multiplied. In doing so it has produced and is still producing quite a
number of new types, some of which may be considered as retrograde
varieties, while others evidently are of the nature of progressive
elementary species.
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