No. 603] 



BUD-VARIATION 



133 



2. Effects of Changed Food Supply.— This last ex- 

 ample was really one of changed food supply induced by 

 mutilation. Change of food supply by other methods has 

 been the basis of scores of experiments, particularly on 

 insects. Many insects are so very whimsical about what 

 they eat that it seems possible their selective appetite 

 may be an inherited instinct impressed by the environ- 

 ment of countless generations. But the total result of all 

 experiments on them is merely to prove that a second 

 generation may be influenced in the start they get in life 

 by the nutrition of the mother. 



The same thing is true in plants. We fertilize a pop 

 corn to get a bumper crop of good plump healthy seeds, 

 but we don't expect a dent com as the next year's result. 

 We very properly endeavor to give our potatoes a bal- 

 anced ration, in expectancy of a larger yield of well- 

 matured, healthy tubers, but we should not expect these 

 tubers to affect our next season's supply other than by 

 their health. Similarly we take scions from well-lighted 

 parts of the tree where growth has been good. In such 

 twigs the graft union heals easily and properly, and a fit 

 channel for conveying nutrients is established. In doing 

 these things we are practising sanitation or preventive 

 medicine, as it were, a laudable proceeding. But the hor- 

 ticulturist who promises a different variety by such 

 means is illogical and misleading. 



Yet we find Bailey so imbued with the idea of making 

 out a perfect case for Lamarckism that he lends the 

 weight of his authority to the following statement among 

 others :^ 



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, 



mercial value, it is propagated and called a "sport." 



We may admit the differences between the branches of 

 a tree without cavil. What is more serious is the impli- 



