NUMBER OF PLANTS. 



211 



times seen some branches bearing double, others single 

 flowers. By the by, let me note, that I have by expe- 

 rience found the vulgar mistaken in that opinion current 

 among them, that the seed of those flowers which have 

 more than the usual and just number of leaves, will pro- 

 duce plants bearing double flowers ; for from the seed of 

 the stock July flowers, succeeding flowers that were of 

 five and six leaves apiece (whereas the usual number in 

 that plant is but four) I had not one double-flowered 

 plant sprung. 



Secondly, as for fruit-trees, we may observe that the 

 main difference between these pretended distinct species, 

 consists in the figure and taste of the fruit, or pericar- 

 pium; which accidents are also wholly to be attributed 

 to the difference of the soil, and the various ways of 

 insition. For the means, and I suspect the only means, 

 to get new fruits, is by sowing the seeds or kernels of 

 apples and pears in good ground, which will give you 

 wildings of a different figure and taste from their mother 

 fruits, whose tastes may be mended and improved by 

 insition. But that by insition new sorts of pears or 

 apples (I mean different both as to figure, colour, mag- 

 nitude and taste) may be produced, is to me scarce 

 credible; because I have hitherto embraced for an 

 universal and undoubted maxim, that the fruit follows 

 the cyon. 



As for plants of striped or variegated leaves, viz., 

 gilded box, holly, alaternus, rosemary, bittersweet, mug- 

 wort, hyssop, mint, thyme, &c., there is less reason to 

 allow them to be different species than either the fore- 

 mentioned flowers and fruits; because, that by several 

 applications to the roots of those plants, they may be so 

 altered from the ordinary colours ; these marks being 

 but the symptoms of a morbid constitution of the plant, 

 induced by the foresaid applications. And, as we 

 observed in flowers, the seed will give you a plant void 

 of those marks, which are propagated in the slip or 

 branch. 



