BUD YABIATION. 
249 
bough ; black and white grapes in the same bunch ; gooseberries 
of different kinds on the same bush ; pears, apples, or cherries, 
of different shapes, colour, and flavour, on the same bough. All 
these are, though of course rare, yet familiar occurrences to 
those on the look-out for such phenomena. It is necessary in 
some of these cases to investigate closely to see whether or no 
grafting of different sorts on one stock has not taken place. 
No doubt some of these cases, recorded by lovers of the mar- 
vellous, were simply cases of adhesion or inocidation, but, 
allowing for these, there still remains a large number which 
cannot be explained by any such process. 
The above-cited illustrations might be largely added to were 
it necessary to do so. Mr. Darwin’s work on 44 Animals and 
Plants ” contains allusions to many others, and includes many 
references to the literature of the subject. The horticultural 
journals, British as well as foreign, contain very numerous 
records of such cases ; * but we have cited enough for our pre- 
sent purpose, and may now pass on to the discussion of some 
of the alleged causes of the phenomena in question. 
It must first of all be premised that these bud variations are 
not necessarily to be considered as malformations. Their or- 
ganisation is often perfect, they are not distorted, they are 
simply variations ; and next, they occur not exclusively in 
plants that have been long subjected to cultivation, but also 
in wild plants. Now plants that have been long in cultiva- 
tion have for the most part been hybridised or 44 crossed ” 
over and over again. Thus in the case of the pelargonium, it 
is supposed that all the immense number of different kinds 
now in cultivation have originated from two or three species. 
These have been hybridised or crossed, their offspring has been 
crossed in the same way, and so in the pelargonium of the pre- 
sent day we have a plant which has, so to speak, a great deal 
of very confusedly mixed blood in it. 
Bud variation is very often only a reversion — a harking 
back — to the characters possessed by the parent ; it is the 
result, as the phrase goes, of a dissociation of hybrid cha- 
racters , the consequence of a sort of filtration by which the 
eonstituent elements become separated from their previous ad- 
mixture.! This reversion may be proximate, just as you may see 
in a family of children that, while most of them resemble both 
* A list of many such instances may also he found in M. Carriere’s u Pro- 
duction et Fixation des Varietes.” 
f The papers of Naudin, Braun, Rejuvenescence (Cytisus Adami), and 
Duchartre, Note sur le Chasselas Panache, in the u Journal de la Societe 
amperiale et centrale d’Horticulture,” 1865, should be read in reference to 
this part of our subject. 
