instance, our Roses, Petunias, Calceolarias, Fuchsias,
Verbenas, Gladioli, Pelargoniums, &c., certainly have had a multiple
origin. A botanist well acquainted with the parent-forms would probably
detect some curious structural differences in their crossed and
cultivated descendant; and he would certainly observe many new and
remarkable constitutional peculiarities. I will give a few instances,
all relating to the Pelargonium, and taken chiefly from Mr. Beck,[783]
a famous cultivator of this plant: some varieties require more water
than others; some are "very impatient of the knife if too greedily used
in making cuttings;" some, when potted, scarcely "show a root at the
outside of the ball of the earth;" one variety requires a certain
amount of confinement in the pot to make it throw up a flower-stem;
some varieties bloom well at the commencement of the season, others at
the close; one variety is known,[784] which will stand "even pine-apple
top and bottom heat, without looking any more drawn than if it had
stood in a common greenhouse; and Blanche Fleur seems as if made on
purpose for growing in winter, like many bulbs, and to rest all
summer." These odd constitutional peculiarities would fit a plant when
growing in a state of nature for widely different circumstances and
climates.

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Flowers possess little interest under our present point of view,
because they have been almost exclusively attended to and selected for
their beautiful colours, size, perfect outline, and manner of growth.
In these particulars hardly one long-cultivated flower can be named
which has not varied greatly. What does a florist care for the shape
and structure of the organs of fructification, unless, indeed, they add
to the beauty of the flower? When this is the case, flowers become
modified in important points; stamens and pistils may be converted into
petals, and additional petals may be developed, as in all double
flowers. The process of gradual selection by which flowers have been
rendered more and more double, each step in the process of conversion
being inherited, has been recorded in several instances. In the
so-called double flowers of the Compositae, the corollas of the central
florets are greatly modified, and the modifications are likewise
inherited. In the columbine _(Aquilegia vulgaris)_ so