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