LEAVES FUOM MY NOTE-BOOK. 333 



were of all colours and shapes, some very ugly and some very 

 handsome." Another witness says: — "Some were round, some 

 kidney, some pink-eyed kidney, piebald and mottled red and 

 purple, of all shapes and sizes." Some of these varieties have 

 been found valuable and have been propagated. 



Numerous instances are given at great length of the produc- 

 tion of graft-hybrids, sometimes the tubers being grafted and 

 sometimes the stems. Mr. Fearing-Burr, a very careful experi- 

 menter, produced distinctly mottled and most curious potatoes by 

 inserting eyes from blue or red potatoes into the substance of 

 white ones, after removing the eyes of the latter. (Letter from 

 Mr. Merrick, of Boston, U.S.A., to Darwin in 187 1.) In Ger- 

 many, Herren Reuer and Lindemuth, both attached to the Royal 

 Gardens of Berlin, inserted eyes of red potatoes into white ones 

 and vice-versa. Many forms partaking of the characters of the 

 inserted bud and stock were obtained ; for instance, some of the 

 tubers were white, with red eyes. 



"Characters of all kinds," says Darwin, "are affected by 

 graft-hybridisation, in whatever way the grafting has been effected. 

 . . . Herr Magnus asserts with much truth that graft hybrids 

 resemble in every respect seminal hybrids, including their great 

 diversity of character. However, the characters of the parent 

 forms are not often homogeneously blended in graft hybrids. . . 

 It would seem that the reproductive elements are not so com- 

 pletely blended by grafting as by sexual generation. . . . 

 Finally, it must, I think, be admitted that we learn from the fore- 

 going cases a highly important physiological fact — namely, that the 

 elements that go to the production of a new being are not 7iecessarily 

 formed by the fnale and female organs. They are present in the 

 cellular tissue in such a state that they can unite without the aid 

 of the sexual organs, and thus give rise to a new bud partaking of 

 the characters of the two parent forms" (pp. 423 — 4). 



I will give two very curious cases of graft hybrids, one being 

 the Cytisus Adami and the other the famous bizarria orange : — 



" The Cytisus Adami is a graft hybrid ; that is, it was pro- 

 duced from the united cellular tissue of two distinct species. Mr. 

 Adam, who raised the original plant, procured this variety by 

 inserting a shield of the bark of C. purpureus into a stock of C. 



