and, without any assignable reason, feebly in other cases. I
have selected this character as an instance of capricious inheritance,
because it is certainly not proper to the parent-species, and because,
both sexes being borne on the same tree, both tend to transmit the same
character. Even supposing that there may have been in some instances
crossing with adjoining trees of the same species, it is not probable
that all the seedlings would have been thus affected. At Moccas Court
there is a famous weeping oak; many of its branches "are 30 feet long,
and no thicker in any part of this length than a common rope:" this
tree transmits its weeping character, in a greater or less degree, to
all its seedlings; some of the young oaks being so flexible that they
have to be supported by props; others not showing the weeping tendency
till about twenty years old.[44] Mr. Rivers fertilized, as he informs
me, the flowers of a new Belgian weeping thorn (_Crataegus oxyacantha_)
with pollen from a crimson not-weeping variety, and three young trees,
"now six or seven years old, show a decided tendency to be pendulous,
but as yet are not so much so as the mother-plant." According to Mr.
MacNab,[45] seedlings from a magnificent weeping birch (_Betula alba_),
in the Botanic Garden at Edinburgh, grew for the first ten or fifteen
years upright, but then all became weepers like their parent. A peach
with pendulous branches, like those of the weeping willow, has been
found capable of propagation by seed.[46] Lastly, a weeping and almost
prostrate yew (_Taxus baccata_) was found in a hedge in Shropshire; it
was a male, but one branch bore female flowers, and produced berries;
these, {19} being sown, produced seventeen trees, all of which had
exactly the same peculiar habit with the parent-tree.[47]

These facts, it might have been thought, would have been sufficient to
render it probable that a pendulous habit would in all cases be
strictly inherited. But let us look to the other side. Mr. MacNab[48]
sowed seeds of the weeping beech (_Fagus sylvanica_), but succeeded in
raising only common beeches. Mr. Rivers, at my request, raised a number
of seedlings from three distinct varieties of weeping elm; and at least
one of the parent-trees was so situated that it could not have been
crossed by any other elm; but none of the