If we select some of these anomalies for breeding-experiments, our
results will not agree throughout, but will tend to group themselves
under two heads. In some cases the isolation of the deviating
individuals will at once show the existence of a distinct variety, which
is capable of producing the anomaly in any desired number of instances;
only dependent on a favorable treatment and a judicious selection. In
other cases no treatment and no selection are adequate to give a similar
result, and the anomaly remains refractory despite all our endeavors to
breed it. The cockscomb and the peloric fox-glove are widely known
instances of permanent anomalies, and others will be dealt with in
future lectures. On the other hand I have often tried in vain to win an
anomalous race from an accidental deviation, or to isolate a teratologic
variety out of more common aberrations. Two illustrative examples may be
quoted. In our next lecture we shall deal with a curious phenomenon in
poppies, consisting in the change of the stamens into pistils and giving
rise to a bright crown of secondary capsules around the central one.
Similar anomalies may be occasionally met with in other species of the
same genus. But they are rare, and may show [357] the conversion of only
a single stamen in the described manner.
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