ught to reflect well on the cases immediately to be
given. I will commence with bud-variations, as exhibited in the fruit, and
then pass on to flowers, and finally to leaves.

_Peach_ (_Amygdalus Persica_).--In the last chapter I gave two cases of
a peach-almond and double-flowered almond which suddenly produced fruit
closely resembling true peaches. I have also recorded many cases of
peach-trees producing buds, which, when developed into branches, have
yielded nectarines. We have seen that no less than six named and
several unnamed varieties of the peach have thus produced several
varieties of nectarine. I have shown that it is highly improbable that
all these peach-trees, some of which are old varieties, and have been
propagated by the million, are hybrids from the peach and nectarine,
and that it is opposed to all analogy to attribute the occasional
production of nectarines on peach-trees to the direct action of pollen
from some neighbouring nectarine-tree. Several of the cases are highly
remarkable, because, firstly, the fruit thus produced has sometimes
been in part a nectarine and in part a peach; secondly, because
nectarines thus suddenly produced have reproduced themselves by seed;
and thirdly, because nectarines are produced from peach-trees from seed
as well as from buds. The seed of the nectarine, on the other hand,
occasionally produces peaches; and we have seen in one instance that a
nectarine-tree yielded peaches by bud-variation. As the peach is
certainly the oldest or primary variety, the {375} production of
peaches from nectarines, either by seeds or buds, may perhaps be
considered as a case of reversion. Certain trees have also been
described as indifferently bearing peaches or nectarines, and this may
be considered as bud-variation carried to an extreme degree.

The _grosse mignonne_ peach at Montreuil produced "from a sporting
branch" the _grosse mignonne tardive_, "a most excellent variety,"
which ripens its fruit a fortnight later than the parent tree, and is
equally good.[813] This same peach has likewise produced by
bud-variation the _early grosse mignonne_. Hunt's large tawny nectarine
"originated from Hunt's small tawny nectarine, but not through seminal
reproduction."[814]

_Plums._--Mr. Knight states that a tree of the yellow magnum bonum
plum, forty years old,