90 HIERACIUM VILLOSUM. 
I 
variability displayed by many species to a greater or less extent, is tliat 
tlie varieties produced by the latter either disappear with the individual 
in which they are manifested, or become transmitted without alteration 
to the following generations, thus, unJer favourable circumstances, 
\ 
giving rise to a marked race, — whilst in the former the form becomes 
broken up in successive generations into individual variations without 
fixity. " Homogeneity and fixity of character are the distinctive sign 
of true races, as are diversity and want of permanence of the agglome- 
rations of mongrels and hybrids/' 
The concluding paragraph of M, Naudin's paper indicates the di- 
rection in which these researches may be brought to bear upon some of 
the most important problems of the present day, especially in connec- 
tion with anthropology, " I am unaware,*' he says, " whether facts 
analogous to those which I have just described have been observed in 
the animal kingdom, but I should not be surprised if it should be 
some day found that in it also intercrossings between well-marked races 
are the cause of individual variability, and that they are incapable of 
creating new raceSj that is to say, uniform aggregations capable of in- 
definite duration. It would certainly not be uninteresting to ascertain 
whether, by alliance with one another, very distinct races fuse into a 
new mixed but homogeneous race, or whether, as in plants, the effect 
of intercrossing is to produce an indefinite diversity of physiognomy 
and temperament." — {Reader.) 
■ [At an early opportunity we shall give an absiract of the important 
researches into hybridity, which Wichura has published in his recent 
work on Willows. — Editor.] 
HIERACIUM VILLOSUM. 
By J. Gr. Baker, Esq. 
In his * Monograph of the British Hieracia,' p. 41, my friend James 
Backhouse, jun., says, with regard to if. villomm: — *'The species is 
omitted, under the firm belief that it is not British. The evidence 
resting upon the specimen in the herbarium of the York Museum, sup- 
posed to be collected by the late G. Don, is weak and unsatisfactory. 
I believe it to be a foreign specimen, and that the plant found by Don 
