BLASTOGENIC VARIATIONS. 119 



three principal forms could be distinguished according 

 to the combination of colours in the flowers. The 

 flowers of the same hybrid, however, resembled each 

 other in the most minute details. One plant, for in- 

 stance, had violet petals of a rather pinker tint than 

 those of one of the parent species, and all the petals 

 were strongly tinged with red on one and the same 

 lateral margin. As far as I could observe, all the 

 flowers were similarly coloured on this stock. On an- 

 other stock, all the sepals had brown rims, and on a 

 third there was a narrow dark orange-coloured band in 

 the centre of each flower. In these cases, therefore, 

 the combination of the colours of the parents which ap- 

 peared in the petals of the hybrids must have been de- 

 cided at the time of fertilisation." * 



That the influence which the maternal fluids canj 

 exert on an embryo during intra-uterine development is f 

 at best very slight seems at first sight to be proved by 

 the experiments of Heape f on the transplantation of 

 rabbits' ova. In the first successful experiment, two 

 segmenting ova were obtained from an Angora doe rab-^ 

 bit which had been fertilised by an Angora buck thirty- 

 two hours previously, and were immediately transferred 

 to the upper end of the fallopian tube of a Belgian hare 

 rabbit which had been fertilised three hours before by 

 a buck of the same breed as herself. In due course 

 this Belgian hare doe gave birth to six young. Four 

 of these resembled herself and her mate, but the other 

 two were undoubted Angoras. The Angora young 

 were characterised by the possession of the long silky 



* " Germ-plasm," p. 256. 



fProc. Roy. Soc., xlviii. p. 457, 1890. 



