22 On the Production of Hybrid Vegetables. 



wise, confound itself with them. An accidental Variety, — that 

 which cannnot with certainty be perpetuated by seed in any 

 situation. I do not believe that a better definition for the pur- 

 poses of science can be given ; and, if Botanists attended to 

 it, their classifications would not be liable to such perpetual 

 variety and contradiction : but, at all events, the experience 

 of the Cultivator must always have weight to supersede the 

 conjectural decisions of the Botanist. 



The colour of the flower is one of the most uncertain fea- 

 tures ; and yet, if immutable through successive generations, 

 it is just as sound a botanical distinction as any other, whilst 

 pubescence is a feature to which more weight is attached, and 

 yet we sometimes find it as variable as colour. For instance, 

 as to Colour, the beautiful Convolvolus varius, figured in 

 the Botanical Magazine* as a variety of C. purpureus, 

 is very similar to that plant in every thing but the colour 

 of the flower. The seedlings of C. purpureus vary with 

 every shade of purple, red, and white, having always five 

 spots at the mouth of the tube, but no variation of colour is 

 ever seen in the different flowers of the same seedling. Con- 

 volvolus varius has the opposite peculiarity ; the plants 

 which I have raised, through twelve or thirteen generations, 

 differed not in the least from each other, but it would be dif- 

 ficult to find two flowers upon any plant exactly alike in the 

 marks of colour, but they never have the five spots in the 

 tube ; and the natural ground is a sulphureous white, with 

 the inside of the tube pale purple, and the flowers are irre- 

 gularly streaked with dark blue, in infinite diversity. Some- 

 times an accidental flower, like a run Carnation, will have 



• Plate 1682. 



