TERATOLOGY.

By the Rev. J. E. VIZE, M.A., F.R.M.S.

TERATOLOGY is the science of monstrosities-of abnormal growths, whether in animal or vegetable life. Looking at man as an animal, we at once detect instances of human teratology in the club foot, hump back, squinting eyes, and a variety of shapes which amount to distortions. We leave man and animals out of the question on the present occasion, and go to vegetable teratology. We shall find amongst plants an enormous amount of malformation, so much so that to anyone who has not had his eyes open to the fact there will be found examples beyond idea. Some of these examples will, we hope, prove interesting. At all events, the searching for them in our gardens, or rambles in the woods and waysides, may beguile many a walk, and charm it with notions, which, to those who do not appreciate study by the roadside, must be somewhat heavy.

It may be said, why study them? They do not appear fascinating from their title. We can do without them. Just so. But there are minds in men which are not satisfied with letting everything alone in blissful ignorance. They find food for the mind in unusual spots of exploration. We say, if you want to be happy and useful never keep in one groove. Try something outside the beaten path of the mill horse.

see.

It may be asked, how do these abnormal forms occur? What causes them? There may be several reasons given. Insects may damage a young plant to a slight extent, and so cause a deviation from the ordinary direct course. Or again, a luxuriant growth may produce a monstrous development. This we can readily Manure your soil too highly, and you at once bring forth an unnatural state of things, the seed feels it, the plant shows it still more. The reverse may occur. Through poverty of surroundings a vegetable may become so enfeebled that it is only a puny child of its parent. Indeed, a host of events may happen to prevent an average growth, and bring about an abnormal one.

Transportation of plants from one country to another must have the effect of making them prolific or depauperated. Flowers from Siberia would fare badly in the temperate zone, still worse in hot climates. Very warm regions, Central Africa to wit, could not send us vegetation which would thrive well here. No.

Again, the changes from moisture to dryness, and the opposite, must alter plants immensely. Go to Kew Gardens; and with all the advantages of artificial dampness, with all justifiable attempts to make plants feel that they are in a natural humidity and temperature, you cannot really succeed. The tree ferns of Kew cannot match the tree ferns of New Zealand. The fir trees are not the fir trees of foreign places, where they are indigenous. They are representations truly enough, but not up to the standard of excellency obtained abroad. Man has a good deal for which to account, and also for which to take credit to himself, in his treatment of things. He can change them considerably for good or the reverse.

Whilst on this subject, let me say I could not help noticing to myself, whilst thinking about our subject of teratology, that it is a great wonder so many vegetables retain so similar an appearance as they do. In the great multitude of plants of the average type we get a likeness running through them all. Why are they not more unlike each other than they are? A little thing would do this. Take for example any plant you like. Let an atom of foreign matter have introduced itself in the natural course of things, or in an artificial way, what distortion it might produce. Let us suppose an atom of grit to have got into the beautiful spiral vessels, what room at once there would be for distortion. The place might become inflamed, and so produce a knot, or let some foreign substance have reached the head of the plant before any perceptible sensation was made. The result might be distortion, it might be hydra-headed, like the Cockscomb flower (Celosia), or twisted considerably from its normal shape.

Fasciation or clubbing occurs occasionally in plants. It is that state in which some parts blend together instead of keeping separate. The first instance I ever remember to have noticed was one in which the branches of a Cotoneaster had become so firmly united with the main trunk of the tree as to form one dense and compact, but flattened, mass.

The common Artichoke of our gardens (Helianthus tuberosus) is liable to this state of clubbing. One case happened in my garden at home. Instead of the round stem, which would probably be less than an inch in diameter, the union of stem and branches had become so firm that whilst you could easily see where the junctions had taken place, yet they were inseparable, and instead of retaining their round shape they had become flat and wide, somewhat resembling three of our fingers side by side. Their width was from 2 to 3 inches. The union of stem and branches was more than a yard in height, the top being very much clubbed.

The gnarls and knots in wood as seen in walking-stalks of an eccentric kind are instances of teratology. It is extraordinary what varied shapes may be recognised by a practised eye, or by the ingenuity of anyone who has a gift for finding resemblances in this way. You may turn these knots into birds, beasts, fishes, reptiles, &c. There was a man, recently dead, who had a peculiar talent in this way. In walking along the road he would detect at a glance certain pieces of gnarled wood, and find a likeness in them to animals, and, by securing them, cut them into what they resembled. Of course, in most cases, they were caricatures, still they conveyed to the mind of a stranger what they were intended to be like. His rooms were, I am told, a museum of eccentricities. Elephants, snakes, lizards, toads, et hoc genus omne, were there. He was as rough in manners as need be, and as singular in speech as he was talented in his own peculiar way of cutting creatures from the pieces of wood he found. We generally believe that Nature in her work far surpasses art, and undoubtedly we are right. This man at all events on one occasion thought differently. Referring to one of his specimens which had been rough in the original piece of wood, he called it Nature, and then alluding to his workmanship, and calling it Art, he said, "That formerly was natur and art combined; natur fails, but art triumps." I should like to have seen

his museum, but fear it has no existence now.* It seems a pity that such original work, and work, too, so much out of the ordinary way, should live a man's life and cease to exist when he dies. Men with a special talent of this kind are not as a rule appreciated. Perhaps they are specimens of teratology themselves. The Garden Scabious (Scabiosa atro-purpurea) supplied me with several specimens of unusual growth at the end of August and the beginning of the following month of this year. There were several plants growing in my garden, but one and one only of them had eccentric flower heads, all of which seemed to be more or less affected. The others were all right, and followed the normal form of blossom. The peculiarity in these malshaped flowers consisted in the fact that instead of the flower being regular, the head of the stem of it elongated itself, and so grew beyond the top of the blossom. Instances of the kind are no doubt very occasionally to be found.

It will be interesting to reserve some of the seeds of this plant, and sow them so as to ascertain whether their successor will tend to perpetuate the variety. Not that the process will continue long. It is not likely it will. The plant on which these abnormal flowers came was a very vigorous and healthy one. Perhaps three quarters of the Scabious adopted the general flower head, the other onefourth of it was affected with heads, as shown in the specimens I here exhibit to you. In some cases the green forms seemed evidently to be flowers altered in growth; in others they were elongated into branches.

I found some clover with the heads of the same divided at the top. Many of the plants were affected similarly more or less, but not all of them. This variety of sport must be very common, I apprehend, because after discovering a few specimens on the railway bank at home one day I found numbers the following day on my vicarage lawn and in the churchyard. The thickened heads of clover form a great contrast to the conical shape of the ordinary plant, and so are easily detected.

Acorns supply double
Nuts, both hazel and

I have a recollection as a schoolboy of seeing the Sunflower similarly affected as the clover just named. The seeds and seed cases of plants furnish some interesting diversions of form from the usual type. fructification within one shell. Plums will do the same. filbert also. They give sometimes three formations. These eccentricities are not very difficult to meet with in the neighbourhood where I live because of the superstitious idea that it is unlucky to break them if they have more kernels than one. The notion seems very singular and must be deeply seated, because one would have thought a boy with a nut would not be in the least particular as to its shape. He would care more for the enjoyment of eating it than anything else. A curb can be put on a boy's appetite you see merely because of a fanciful idea which has no existence in reality.

In a cider country like Herefordshire there must occur to the minds of some of us instances in which monstrous forms of apples have been produced on the

*On the authority of a resident, this museum was at Stratford-on-Avon, its proprietor was Henry Jones, who called it his " Phusiglyptic" museum, and it has ceased to exist since the death, a few years ago, of its projector.-ED.

trees. I rather thought some might have been figured in The Pomona, and fancied I recollected having seen some, but they are not there. Nor is there any reason that they should be. The object of the book is not to show defects, but standards of excellence.

Leaves may be liable to sports. The common Red Clover of our fields has supplied me with several specimens of unusual growth. We all know that Clover generally has three leaves on the one stalk; I have found many cases of four instead of three; also of five; these, however, are rarer, whilst rarest of all is the six-leaved form.

I have not yet discovered a Strawberry leaf of any very eccentric shape, but am convinced that a search over a wider range of plants than are at my command would give parallel instances to the above-named Clover.

In Mosses there is a tendency to sport in the production of fruit and fruit vessels. Hofmeister quotes some instances from Gumbel (Hofmeister, p. 181). He states that two capsules were found on one stalk of Mnium serratum; also two capsules upon one apophysis in Bryum argenteum and Splachnum vasculosum, and suggests "the possibility of a bifurcation of the growing upper end of the fruit rudiment." I would in all humility venture to think it was not the fruit rudiment, but a cause farther up towards the fructification itself, that created the fork in the stalk.

Then again, Polytrichum juniperinum has supplied two fruits and two fruit stalks underneath one common Calyptera, which seems to indicate the occurrence in one central cell of the mass having two central germinal vesicles without the one and same fruit vessel. Hypnum lutescens has supplied an amalgamation of two capsules, each having a peristome, or fringed mouthpiece.

With regard to ferns, the departures from the standard shape of them are indeed enormous. Let anyone have collected them with a view to varieties, and he will very soon find that he has more than he expected. Let him turn to Mr. Lowe's work on ferns, and see the hundreds of them classified there. Well for those who did their collecting years ago, before the ruthless murderers of ferns exterminated them! We want a Sherborne Society indeed. We want men's steps to be turned from uprooting our flowers, primroses to wit, as well as ferns, into useful citizenship. Many of these destroyers of plants who rove about the country to sell varieties are too lazy to do an honest day's work. Idleness suits them best. If people would not encourage these traffickers in vegetation by buying their plants, they would not get them for sale. The mischief is just as great with the purchaser as with the seller. How this is to be stopped is another thing. The fault continues, and is likely to do. Let us return to our subject. Mr. Lowe gives Blechnum boreale, Polypodium vulgare Aspidium filix mas, Lastrea filix fæmina as having several hundreds of varieties between them.

Is not such a list enough to frighten all the botanical zeal out of anyone beginning to study ferns? I think so. Some one said not long ago "She was very glad to be old enough to have lived before competitive examinations were fashionable; she should have gone mad." The competition amongst botanists to make such hair-splitting for varieties that has gone on is maddening. A man

with an extremely crooked nose is a man for all that. If sub-division should ever be pursued "hot and strong" for the human being, that crooked-nosed man would be variety curve-rostrum. Oh, fancy to what indignities we poor creatures should have to submit. May the day of such degradation be far off.

In looking through my herbarium, there are certainly some very singular forms assumed by many of the species. I remember finding a very crested head of Blechnum boreale on the Sugar Loaf Mountain, Co. Wicklow. The same county at the Powerscourt Waterfall and the Dargle supplied some wonderful shapes of Polypodium vulgare. The rare Lastrea rigida, three plants of which I found at the Hampton Rocks, in Bath, had one frond very much forked towards the end of its pinnæ. I presume this arose from the luxuriant spot in which it lived. Up to that time it had never been recorded as living so far south, which may account for its freak.

Then, again, Polypodium phegopteris gives an instance of a splendid forked pinna on a very long frond.

Ophioglossum vulgare has a forked tongue. That some of these freaks of nature are tolerably permanent may, I suppose, be proved by the great number there are in cultivation. To visit London and see the quantities of tasselated Pteris serrulata in private houses on the balconies, as well as sold in the streets, would guarantee that the form is not likely to become extinct. It can be produced too easily for that. Ferns seem unusually capable of sporting themselves. Their gracefulness is not diminished at all by it.

I have ventured to speak a little against the ruthless destruction of plants. All men are not to be classed as wilful uprooters of plants. There is a beautiful walk in one of our most beautiful cities. It has a carriage drive for the centre, a gravel path on one side for foot-passengers on which to walk; the other side, instead of a pathway, has a quickly-running rivulet backed by a stone wall. On this wall I found a most extraordinary form of the common Hartstongue fern. Where the ligulate shape of the frond, generally speaking, would have ended on both sides at about equal distances from the mid-rib, a vein interfered. Beyond this vein on both sides a fresh lot of sori grew, not necessarily, although occasionally, continuous with the first sets. It is amongst the most extraordinary things I ever saw amongst ferns. There were only a few specimens. I took just enough for myself, and communicated the fact to a friend who had often botanised with me, and passed the very spot. Ah," he said, "so you have found them. I took downright good care whenever you were walking with me at that place, to divert your attention from that side of the road, and bring you to the other." My friend, who by profession was a surgeon, certainly did not take unusual things for extermination's sake, in that instance. Nor, may I add, do I think any true botanists, as opposed to dealers for money, do so. They may take sufficient for their needs, and there their capture ends.

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Now in collecting fungi, as contrasted with ferns, you cannot well exterminate them. Ferns you may, not fungi. Fungi are many of them utterly microscopical, whilst the larger sorts are so fleshy that they would soon deliquesce if you took them.