168 Retrograde Varieties 



seems to be propagated only by cuttings or by 

 grafting. If this is true, all specimens must be 

 considered as constituting together only one 

 individual, notwithstanding their wide distribu- 

 tion in the gardens and parks of so many coun- 

 . tries. This induces me to suppose, that the 

 tendency to reversion is not a character of the 

 variety as such, but rather a peculiarity of this 

 one individual. In other words it seems prob- 

 able that when the whitish variety arises a sec- 

 ond time from the red species, it is not at all 

 necessary that it should exhibit this same tend- 

 ency to revert. Or to put it still in another 

 way, I think that we may suppose that a variety, 

 which might be produced repeatedly from the 

 same original stock, would only in rare indi- 

 viduals have a tendency to revert, and in most 

 cases would be as absolutely constant as the 

 species itself. 



Such a conception would give us a distinct 

 insight into the cause of the rarity of these 

 reversions. Many varieties of shrubs and trees 

 have originated but once or twice. Most of 

 them must therefore, if our supposition is cor- 

 rect, be expected to be stable and only a few 

 may be expected to be liable to reversions. 



Among the conifers many very good cases of 

 reversions by buds are to be found in gardens 

 and glasshouses. They behave exactly like the 

 whitish currant. But as the varietal characters 



