672 The American Naturalist. [August, 
connection. It has been said that the asexually multiplied 
plants may afterwards produce flowers and resume the normal 
method of reproduction and variation. I now wish to add- 
what I have already said, that plants may be continuously 
multiplied asexually and yet the offspring may vary, and the 
variations may be transmitted from generation to generation, 
quite as perfectly as if seed production intervened. This has 
been true with certain plants through a long period of time, 
as the banana, and every intelligent gardener knows that 
plants propagated by cuttings often “sport” or vary. Here 
are cases, then, in which variation does not originate from sex, 
unless Weismann is willing to concede that the result of pre- 
vious sexual union has remained latent through any number 
of generations and has been carried to all parts of the plant 
by a generally diffused germ-plasm ; and if this is admitted, 
then I must again insist that this germ-plasm must be just 
as amenable to external influences as the soma-plasm with 
which it is indissolubly associated. I have repeated this argu- 
ment in order to introduce the subject of “ bud variations,” 
or those “sports” which now and then appear upon certain 
limbs or parts of plants and which are nearly always readily 
propagated by cuttings. These variations cannot be attributed 
to sex,in the ordinary and legitimate application of the Weis- 
mannian hypothesis. Whilst these “sports” are well known 
to horticulturists, they are generally considered to be rare, 
but nothing can be farther from the truth. As a matter of 
fact, every branch of a tree is different from every other 
branch, and when the difference is sufficient to attract atten- 
tion, or to have commercial value, it is propagated and called 
a “sport.” This leads me to recall the old discussion of the 
phytomer, or the hypothesis that every node and internode of 
a tree—and we might add the roots—is in reality a distinct 
individual, inasmuch as it possesses the power of leading an 
independent existence when severed from the plant, and of 
reproducing its kind. However this may be as a matter of 
of speculation, it is certainly true as regards the phenome- 
non, and shows conclusively that if the germ-plasm exists at. 
all, it exists throughout the entire structure of the plant. 
