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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
parents, some are like the one or the other, while some again 
present little likeness to either parent, but reproduce the 
lineament of some remote ancestor. A singular illustration 
of this phenomenon was brought under the winter’s notice by 
Mr. Wills, and in which two plants of pelargonium showed the 
characters of three separate ancestors ; the exact lineage of one 
was not fully known, but the history of the other was definitely 
recorded. The plant in question presented, after the fifth 
generation by seed (and not till then), various branches bearing 
leaves undistinguishable from those of the varieties known as 
44 Unique,” 44 Beauty of Oulton,” and 44 Italia Unita” — three 
very distinct varieties, each of which were known to have 
been at some time or another ancestors of the plant in ques- 
tion, either as furnishing pollen or as the seed-parent. 
Another plant of mixed origin, after retaining its characters 
for three years, suddenly produced branches some of which 
had leaves of the form and colouration of those of 44 Beauty 
of Oulton,” the original seed-parent, while the remainder 
were bedecked with leaves in all respects similar to those of 
44 Lucy Grrieve,” the ancestral pollen or male parent. The two 
varieties in question are widely different. In the cases just 
alluded to there was not a mere change of colour — an affair 
of comparatively minor importance — but there was a change 
of configuration and substance. Other cases of a similar 
nature have been recorded by various observers, amongst 
others by Mr. Grieve, the raiser of the popular 44 Mrs. Pollock ” 
pelargonium. 
Of course any plant produced from seed requiring for its 
development the contact of the pollen tube with the ovule or 
the germinal vesicle must bo held to have mixed characters, 
and more markedly so in the case of unisexual flowers, either 
monoecious or dioecious. From this point of view a case lately 
recorded by Mr. Meehan becomes very significant. That gen- 
tleman relates that he obtained cuttings from Cuphea leiantha , 
a dioecious plant, producing its male and female flowers on 
different individuals. It is not stated whether the cuttings 
were taken from a male or a female plant, but it is stated that 
some of these cuttings produced male, others female, plants, 
and yet all were taken from a plant of one sex only. So, too, 
it is well known that certain unisexual trees will in some 
seasons produce male flowers only, in other seasons female 
flowers only, and vice versa . 
To enter into questions relating to the sexuality of plants 
would, however, lead us too far. We merely now indicate the 
facts, as proofs of the composite character of the plant. 
But dissociation of mixed characters will not account for all 
the cases of bud variation. Very often we have no evidence at 
