462 INHEKITANCE. Chap: XII. 



to render it probable that a pendulous habit would in all cases be 

 strictly inherited. But let us look to the other side. Mr. MacNab 42 

 sowed seeds of the weeping beech (Fagus sylvatica), but succeeded 

 in raising only common beeches. Mr. Eivers, at my request, raised 

 a number of seedlings from three distinct varieties of weeping elm ; 

 and at least one of the parent-trees was so situated that it could not 

 have been crossed by any other elm ; but none of the young trees, 

 now about a foot or two in height, show the least signs of weeping. 

 Mr. Eivers formerly sowed above twenty thousand seeds of the 

 weeping ash (Fraxinus excelsior), and not a single seedling was in 

 the least degree pendulous : in Germany, M. Borchmeyer raised a 

 thousand seedlings, with the same result. Nevertheless, Mr. Ander- 

 son, of the Chelsea Botanic Garden, by sowing seed from a weeping 

 ash, which was found before the year 1780, in Cambridgeshire, 

 raised several pendulous trees. 43 Professor Henslow also informs 

 me that some seedlings from a female weeping ash in the Botanic 

 Garden at Cambridge were at first a little pendulous, but afterwards 

 became quite upright: it is probable that this latter tree, which 

 transmits to a certain extent its pendulous habit, was derived by a 

 bud from the same original Cambridgeshire stock; whilst other 

 weeping ashes may have had a distinct origin. But the crowning- 

 case, communicated to me by Mr. Eivers, which shows how 

 capricious is the inheritance of a pendulous habit, is that a variety 

 of another species of ash (F. lentisci/olia), now about twenty years 

 old, which was formerly pendulous, " has long lost this habit, every 

 " shoot being remarkably erect ; but seedlings formerly raised from 

 " it were perfectly prostrate, the stems not rising more than two 

 " inches above the ground." Thus the weeping variety of the common 

 ash, which has been extensively propagated by buds during a long- 

 period, did not with Mr. Eivers, transmit its character to one seed- 

 ling out of above twenty thousand ; whereas the weeping variety of 

 a second species of ash, which could not, whilst grown in the same 

 garden, retain its own weeping character, transmitted to its character 

 the pendulous habit in excess ! 



Many analogous facts could be given, showing how apparently 

 capricious is the principle of inheritance. All the seedlings from a 

 variety of the Barberry (B. vulgaris) with red leaves inherited the 

 same character ; only about one-third of the seedlings of the copper 

 Beech (Fagus sylvatica) had purple leaves. Not one out of a hundred 

 seedlings of a variety of the Cerasuspadus, with yellow fruit, bore yellow 

 fruit : one-twelfth of the seedlings of the variety of Cornus mascula, 

 with yellow fruit, came true : 44 and lastly, all the trees raised by my 

 father from a yellow-berried holly (Ilex uquifolium), found wild, 



< J Verlot, op. cit., p. 93. 1833, p. 597. 



43 For these several statements, see 44 These statements are taken from 



Loudon's ' Gard. Magazine, vol. x. Alph. De Candolle, ' Bot. Geograph., 



1834, pp. 408, 180; and vol. ix., p. 1083. 



