in the Fertilisation of Papilionaceous Floivers. 463 



mother. I have said that apparently we have here a fact of this 

 nature ; for I must state that Mr. Coe sent me a dozen of the 

 pure Negro Beaus which produced in 1857 the extraordinary 

 mixture. I sowed them this year ; and though quite like each 

 other in appearance, the dozen produced plants differing in colour 

 of flower, &c., and beans of various tints ; so that these beans, 

 though not affected in their outer tunics, seem to have been the 

 product of a cross in the previous year of 1856. 



This year I sowed the extraordinary mixture raised by Mr. Coe 

 in 1857 from the four rows of the Negro Bean, which he believes 

 to have been quite pure ; and the produce is the most extraordi- 

 narily heterogeneous mixture which can be conceived — each plant 

 differing from the others in talluess, foliage, colom', and size of 

 flower, time of ripening and flowering, size, shape, and colour of 

 pods, and beans of every conceivable tint from black to pale 

 brown, some dark purple and some slightly mottled, and of 

 various sizes and shapes. My gardener remarked, as did Mr. 

 Coe with respect to some of his plants, that some of the seedlings 

 seemed to have been crossed by the Scarlet Runner : one of my 

 plants trailed on the ground for a length of 4 feet, its flowers 

 were white, and its pods were very long, flat, and broad j the 

 beans were pinkish purple, and twice as large as those of the 

 Negro ; there were also in two cases brown and purple beans in 

 the same pod. These facts certainly seem to indicate a cross 

 from the Scarlet Runner ; but as the latter is generally esteemed 

 a distinct species, I feel very doubtful on this head ; and we 

 should remember that it is well established that mongrels fre- 

 quently, or even generally, are much more vigorous than either 

 of their parents. 



Mr. Coe tried the experiment more philosophically, and sepa- 

 rated his heterogeneous Negro beans into twelve lots, according 

 to their tints ; and keeping a few of each as a sample, he sowed 

 them, and he has now harvested them separately. He has kindly 

 sent me samples of all. The variation is now much greater than 

 it was in the parent lot of 1857. Beans of new colours have 

 appeared, such as pure white, bright purple, yellow ; and many 

 are much mottled. Not one of the twelve lots has transmitted its 

 own tint to all the beans produced by it ; nevertheless the dark 

 beans have clearly produced a greater number of dark, and the 

 light-coloured beans a greater number of light colour. The mot- 

 tling seems to have been strongly inherited, but always increased. 

 To give one case of the greatest variability, a dirty-brown bean, 

 nearly intermediate in tint between the darkest and lightest, pro- 

 duced a sample which I have been enabled to divide into no less 

 than a dozen diftcrent tints, viz. pure white, black, purple, yel- 

 low, and eight other thits between brown, slate, yellow, purple, 



