442 Scientific Intelligence. 
number of individuals which annually disappear,—or else, we may add, 
are obliterated in the next generation through cross-fertilization by pollen 
of the surrounding individuals of the typical sort.—whence results the 
general fixity of species in Nature. But under man’s protecting care the 
are preserved and multiplied, perhaps still further modified, and the bet- 
ter sorts fixed by selection and segregation. 
Keeping these principles in view, Mr. Vilmorin concluded that, in 
order to obtain varieties of any particular sort, his first endeavor should 
be to elicit variation in any direction whatever; that is, he selected his 
seed simply from those individuals which differed most from the type of 
the species, however unlike the state it was desired to originate. Re- 
eating this in the second, third and the succeeding generations, the 
resulting plants were found to have a tendency to vary widely, as was 
anticipated ; being loosed, as it were, from the ancestral influence, which 
no longer acted upon a straight and continuous line, but upon one 
broken and interrupted by the opposing action of the immediate parents 
d . Thus confused, as it were, by the contrariety of its 
inherited tendencies, it is the more free to sport in various ways; & 
we have only to select those variations which manifest the qualities 
by 
the strange fertilization, and rendered productive by the pollen of its 
e cannot follow out this interesting but rather recondite subject an 
‘a brief article like this. But we are naturally led to enquire whether 
the history of those plants with which man has had most to do, and the 
study of the laws which regulate the production and perpetuation of 
varieties in vat 
nated, occasionally, under circumstances equivalent to artificial selection 
nd segregation. Some recent attempts which have been m this 
ection we may hope to notice upon another occasion. — dle 
6. Botanical Necrology for 1858.—The list. of botanists who have 
departed during the past year is a long one, and includes so 
Dr. B. Biasoletio, of Trieste; died January 17, 1858, act. 65. He we 
‘a local oe of merit, and an investigator of the Alge of om Adriatic. 
7m i. th i 
‘ 
Sf ee 
