LEAVES FROM MY NOTE-BOOK. 331 



That extraordinary monster, the St. Valery apple, must not be 

 passed over (p. 371) : — 



" The flower has a double calyx with ten divisions and fourteen 

 styles, surmounted by conspicuous oblique stigmas, but is destitute 

 of stamens or corolla. The fruit is constricted round the middle, 

 and is formed by five seed-cells, surmounted by nine other cells. 

 Not being provided with stamens, the fruit requires artificial ferti- 

 lisation, and the girls of St. Valery annually go to ^ faire ses 

 pommes,' each marking her own fruit with a ribbon ; and as differ- 

 ent pollen is used the fruit differs, and we have an instance of the 

 direct action of foreign pollen on the mother plant." The con- 

 trast between the -St. Valery apple, with its fourteen seed-cells, and 

 the pigeon apple, which has only four cells, is certainly very great. 

 Another odd instance of a "sporting" tendency is given on pp. 

 348 — 9, where one pea-plant produced four sub-varieties — viz., 

 blue and round, blue and wrinkled, white and round, and white 

 and wrinkled peas ; and though the grower, Mr. Masters, sowed 

 these four varieties separately during several successive years, each 

 kind always reproduced all four kinds mixed together. 



Sporting in Plums (p. 399). — The grosse mignonne peach at 

 Montrueil developed a sporting branch, the "grosse mignonne tar- 

 dive" a most e.xcellent fruit, which ripens a fortnight sooner than 

 that of the parent tree, and this same peach has produced by bud 

 variation the early grosse mignonne. By no possible theory, it 

 seems, can one account for the same tree producing a late and an 

 early fruiting sport. 



A tree of yellow magnum bonum plums, forty years old, pro- 

 duced a branch which yielded red magnum bonums. A single 

 tree out of four or five hundred trees of the " Early Prolific " 

 plum, descended from an old French variety bearing purple fruit, 

 produced when about ten years old bright yellow plums'. 



Chrysanthemum (p. 404). — A seedling, raised by Mr. Salter, 

 produced by bud variation six distinct sorts, five different in colour 

 and one in foliage, all of which are now fixed. When a branch of 

 chrysanthemum sports into a new variety, says Mr. Salter, it can 

 generally be propagated and kept true. 



Rose. — The history of the moss-rose is peculiar ; it is supposed 

 to have arisen from tlie Provence rose {R. centifolia) by bud 



