[ 329 ] 



Xcavci? from in^ flotc^:©ooh : 



(3lcaniiui5 from an ^S*l^ Jfie^^— r'W'^'>"'"^A 



By Mrs. Alice Bodington. 



I HAVE noted down a few out of the many striking instances 

 given by Darwin as to Bud-variation and Graft-hybrids* in 

 various plants, showing that the somatic cells are capable of 

 producing varieties of every kind without the intervention of the 

 sexual organs.! Darwin also enters at length into the subject of 

 those sudden variations known to gardeners as " sports." That 

 these sudden variations are due to some law or laws one cannot 

 doubt ; yet I think little or nothing is known, even now, about the 

 mode of action of these laws. Often we recognise a " memory of 

 cells," by which old and perhaps long-lost ancestral characteristics 

 are revived ; but quite as often Nature seems to have resolved 

 upon making a sudden change, as in the case of the yellow 

 magnum-bonum plum tree, which after forty years produced a 

 branch bearing purple plums. 



. As in the dog, we find a new species descended from the wolf 

 or the jackal, so in the peach we have a new species descended 

 from the almond, with what may be called a grandchild in the 

 shape of the nectarine. The peach is nowhere found wild. It 

 was introduced into Europe a little before the Christian era, and 

 from the fact of its not having a pure Sanscrit or Hebrew name, it 

 is supposed to have originated in Far Eastern Asia, where the 

 double-flowering Chinese peach still shows transitional qualities. 

 The fruit of this Chinese peach is much elongated and flattened, 

 with the flesh both bitter and sweet, but not uneatable. | From 



*Animals and Plants under Domestication, Vol. I., Chaps. IX., x., xi., xii. 



tChap. xi., p. 398 — " These cases prove that those authors . . . are in 

 error . . . who attribute all variability to the mere act of sexual union." 



TChap. X., p. 359. Van Mons states that he once raised from a peach- 

 stone a peach having the aspect of a wild tree, with fruit like that of the 

 almond. The French peach-almond bears a fruit oval and swollen, with the 

 aspect of a peach, including a hard stone with a fleshy covering, which is 

 sometimes eatable. A peach-almond grafted on a peach bore during 1863 and 

 1864 almonds alone ; but in 1865 bore six peaches and no almonds. A double- 

 flowered almond, after producing almonds during several years, suddenly bore 

 for two years spherical, fleshy, peach-like fruits, and then reverted to its former 

 state and produced large almonds. 



International Journal of Microscopy and Natural Science. 



Third Series. Vol. VI. w 



