HYBRID INTERMIXTURES. 
377 
that parent, produced small flowers, four at each joint, from 
the axills of the leaves, in the same manner as C. purpureus, 
and of a colour more purple than the pendulous racemes on 
the other branches, which had about 16 flowers on a spike. 
This fact is scarcely less wonderful than if a mule, between 
a mare and an ass, were at three years old to acquire an 
ass’s tail. It was positively stated to me, 30 years ago, by a 
nurseryman, that Spong’s rose was not a seedling, but an 
accidental sucker from the rose de Meaux, which had as- 
sumed a different character of leaf and flower, and main- 
tained its diversity : a phenomenon which, if true, appears 
to be in some degree analogous. I have also seen the flower 
of the yellow Austrian rosa lutea borne upon a branch of the 
two-coloured var. bicolor, improperly called a Persian spe- 
cies, purpurea, by Sweet ; but certainly a garden cross 
from lutea. Jacquin had observed, also, that this two- 
coloured plant sometimes bore flowers entirely yellow. 
I am not informed which was the female parent of the 
hybrid cytisus, but I entertain no doubt that it was the la- 
burnum, because the foliage approximates to it, and the 
flower follows rather the colour of purpureus ; as the mule 
Rhododendrons by Azalea Pontica have the evergreen leaf of 
the former, and are more disposed to follow the yellow colour 
of the latter. The natural leaves of the hybrid cytisus are 
about four times as long, and four times as broad, that is, 
sixteen times as large as those of the curious branch on which 
the leaves are as crowded as on C. purpureus ; the general 
foliage of the tree, though altered from the exact shape of the 
laburnum, being little, if at all, reduced in size. I have 
been told, but cannot verify the fact, that a like circnmstance 
has occurred in France to a plant of the same mule. Grafts 
or layers from the anomalous branch will in all probability 
preserve their acquired character, and be so propagated as a 
distinct plant. 
It was apparent to me that no botanist had been able to 
distinguish Nicotiana, Salpiglossis, and Petunia, except by 
features which I knew to be unsupported by the fact, though 
Salpiglossis, in my humble opinion, has been erroneously 
placed in a different order and alliance from the others, 
plants with five stamina being considered Solaneee, and 
those in which the fifth is wanting Scrophularineae. I had 
ascertained the utter invalidity of that feature, having seen 
flowers of the same Salpiglossis with only four stamens, with 
