ency to variation is less marked in that mode of propagation
which takes place asexually; it is in that mode that the minor
characters of animal and vegetable structures are most completely
preserved. Still, it will happen sometimes, that the gardener, when he
has planted a cutting of some favourite plant, will find, contrary to
his expectation, that the slip grows up a little different from the
primitive stock--that it produces flowers of a different colour or make,
or some deviation in one way or another. This is what is called the
'sporting' of plants.

In animals the phenomena of asexual propagation are so obscure, that
at present we cannot be said to know much about them; but if we turn to
that mode of perpetuation which results from the sexual process, then
we find variation a perfectly constant occurrence, to a certain extent;
and, indeed, I think that a certain amount of variation from the
primitive stock is the necessary result of the method of sexual
propagation itself; for, inasmuch as the thing propagated proceeds from
two organisms of different sexes and different makes and temperaments,
and as the offspring is to be either of one sex or the other, it is
quite clear that it cannot be an exact diagonal of the two, or it would
be of no sex at all; it cannot be an exact intermediate form between
that of each of its parents--it must deviate to one side or the other.
You do not find that the male follows the precise type of the male
parent, nor does the female always inherit the precise characteristics
of the mother,--there is always a proportion of the female character in
the male offspring, and of the male character in the female offspring.
That must be quite plain to all of you who have looked at all
attentively on your own children or those of your neighbours; you will
have noticed how very often it may happen that the son shall exhibit the
maternal type of character, or the daughter possess the characteristics
of the father's family. There are all sorts of intermixtures and
intermediate conditions between the two, where complexion, or beauty,
or fifty other different peculiarities belonging to either side of the
house, are reproduced in other members of the same family. Indeed, it
is sometimes to be remarked in this kind of variation, that the variety
belongs, strictly speaking, to neither of the immediate parents; you
will see a child in a family who is not like either its father or its
mother; but some ol