Varie gated Leaves. 265 
half race were still continued, the double race would 
some day appear quite suddenly, and that it would then, 
after a short but sufficient isolation, persist as a constant, 
though highly variable, race. 1 
24. VARIEGATED LEAVES. 
Variegated plants have long been great favorites in 
the garden, and their great instability has contributed 
largely to the development of the horticultural concep- 
tion of a variety, for the variations in their color pattern 
are practically unlimited. Hardly any two leaves are 
alike, and many species have a whole series of dappled 
and flecked varieties. They also possess the striking 
property of continually and conspicuously reverting to 
the species to which they belong. Such reversions occur 
either amongst seedlings or as bud-variations, and since 
on shrubs and trees these latter often remain for many 
vears and not rarely in more than one instance on the 
* / 
same plant, they can be seen by every one. In this way 
these bud-variations have come to be regarded as a suf- 
ficient proof of the idea that varieties are derivative and 
unstable structures, which always tend to revert to their 
parent species. 
Especially in the first half of the eighteenth century 
were plants with speckled and striped leaves very much 
sought after. 2 About that time the well-known English 
gardener THOMAS FAIRCHILD possessed more than one 
hundred varieties of them in his garden, and afterwards 
SCHLECHTENDAHL published a list from which it can 
be seen that variegation is distributed over the whole 
*!. e., as an eversporting variety with a wide amplitude of varia- 
tion which however would not alter in the course of the generations. 
"MEYEN, Pfiansen-Pathologie, 1841, p 282. 
