l, and also in that of special groups of plants, and hence may
even be of assistance in the determination of affinities. In any case
the data supplied by teratology require to be used with caution and in
conjunction with those derived from the study of development and from
analogy. It is even possible that some malformations, especially when
they acquire a permanent nature and become capable of reproducing
themselves by seed, may be the starting-point of new species, as they
assuredly are of new races, and between a race and a species he would be
a bold man who would undertake to draw a hard and fast line.[7]

Discredit has been cast on teratology because it has been incautiously
used. At one time it was made to prove almost everything; what wonder
that by some, now-a-days, it is held to prove nothing. True the evidence
it affords is sometimes negative, often conflicting, but it is so rather
from imperfect interpretation than from any intrinsic worthlessness. If
misused the fault lies with the disciple, not with Nature.

Teratology as a guide to the solution of morphological problems has been
especially disparaged in contrast with organogeny, but unfairly so.
There is no reason to exalt or to disparage either at the expense of the
other. Both should receive the attention they demand. The study of
development shows the primitive condition and gradual evolution of parts
in any given individual or species; it carries us back some stages
further in the history of particular organisms, but so also does
teratology. Many cases of arrest of development show the mode of growth
and evolution more distinctly, and with much greater ease to the
observer, than does the investigation of the evolution of organs under
natural circumstances. Organogeny by no means necessarily, or always,
gives us an insight into the principles regulating the construction of
flowers in general. It gives us no archetype except in those
comparatively rare cases where primordial symmetry and regularity exist.
When an explanation of the irregularity of development in these early
stages of the plant's history is required, recourse must be had to the
inferences and deductions drawn from teratological investigations and
from the comparative study of allied forms precisely as in the case of
adult flowers.

The study of development is of the highest importance in the examination
of plants as individuals, but in regard to comparative anatomy and
morphology, and s