46 



JIOYAL IIORTI CULTURAL SOCIETY. 



races and varieties, sometimes very different in appearance, but 

 having the same morphologic organization and capable of breeding 

 with each other by crossing as members of the same family. I 

 allow that there will always be doubtful cases, even after the 

 proof of fertile crossing in the whole series of possible generations ; 

 but this is no reason for separating, as so many primordially dis- 

 tinct entities, what so many observed facts and so many analogies 

 prove to be able to proceed, by way of evolution, from a single 

 primary specific type. If we transport any one of our race of 

 pear-trees into all the regions of the globe wherein it is able to 

 exist, it will tend to place itself in harmony with the media, and 

 we may be sure that after some generations it will have given rise 

 to new and numerous varieties. This fact, which is realized in the 

 sight of man in all the economical plants which are spread through 

 the globe, affords the key to those polymorphous species, so em- 

 barrassing to the botanist, and which have become so only because 

 nature has itself spread them over immense extents of country. 



XI. Note on the Moral Organogeny of the Pear-tree. 

 By M. J. Decaisne. 



M. Decaisne had already expressed his opinion on the value of 

 certain specific characters in a paper addressed to the Societe Bo- 

 tanique de Trance, and which was published in the ' Bulletin ' of 

 the Society, April 3, 1857. The former part of this communica- 

 tion touches on the topic which is discussed at large in the pre- 

 ceding paper. He states decidedly his opinion that botanists 

 ought rather to condense species in referring them to types which 

 are really natural and stable, instead of multiplying them, as has 

 been the fashion for some years past, and supports his views by a 

 reference to Dr. Hooker's introductory essay in the ' Flora Indica 

 and he does not hesitate to assert that some of his work, as that 

 of the Plantagineae in the ' Prodromus,' if it were to be done over 

 again, would be done on a wider principle. 



It is not necessary to quote more from the former part of the 

 paper, but there is a part at the close which will form a fitting 

 appendix to the valuable memoir of which a translation has been 

 given above, as it treats on the nature of the parts of fructification 

 in the pear-tree ; and there is more reason for reproducing it here 

 as it is not very generally accessible. 



" When we examine very young flower-buds of the pear towards 



