270 Mr. Knight on the Variegation of Plants. 



none similar to other vines, which permanently afford coloured 

 fruit, it may be confidently inferred, that the nature of the union 

 between the tingeing matter and the plants is very essentially dif- 

 ferent. 



All the variegated plants that I obtained from the farina of 

 the Aleppo vine, are not only perfectly free from disease and 

 debility of every kind, but many of them possess a more than 

 ordinary degree of hardiness and vigour; and two of them ap- 

 pear much more capable of affording mature fruit, in the climate 

 of England, than any now cultivated. It is therefore sufficiently 

 evident that the kind of variegation which I have described is 

 neither the offspring of, nor connected with, disease or debility 

 of any kind. But the same inference must not be drawn re- 

 specting other variegated plants ; for variegation itself appears 

 to consist of several distinct kinds. The leaves of a variety of 

 the common cabbage are often seen, in the cottage garden, curi- 

 ously tinged with different shades of red and purple, like the 

 leaves of the vines which I have described : but in the cabbage 

 these colours combine and melt into each other, whereas in the 

 vines the distinct colours are separated by well defined lines. 

 The colours of the cabbage are transferred to its offspring, which 

 is perfectly hardy and vigorous. 



The spotted lettuce must also be classed with variegated 

 plants, and the offspring of this is as hardy as those of other va- 

 rieties : but the most common kind of variegation, in which the 

 leaves are variously striped with white and yellow, though not 

 the offspring, as some writers have imagined, of disease, is, how- 

 ever, closely connected with some degree of debility; possibly 

 owing to the imperfect action of light on all such parts of the 

 leaves as are either white or yellow. For I have observed that 

 variegated hollies are less patient of shade than such as are 



wholly 



