I have not hitherto considered budding in relation to my theories, but it is obvious that it is to be explained, from my point of view, by supposing that the germ-plasm which passes on into a budding individual consists not only of the unchanged germ-plasm of the first ontogenetic stage, but of this substance altered, so far as to correspond with the altered structure of the individual which arises from it—viz., the rootless shoot which springs from the stem or branches. The alteration must be very slight, and perhaps quite insignificant, for it is possible that the differences between the secondary shoots and the primary plant may depend chiefly on the changed conditions of development, which takes place beneath the earth in the latter case, and in the tissues of the plant in the former. Thus we may imagine that the idio-plasm [? of that particular bud], when it develops into a flowering shoot, produces at the same time the germ-cells which are found in the latter. We thus approach an understanding of Fritz Müller’s observation; for if the whole shoot which produces the flower arises from the same idio-plasm which also forms its germ-cells, we can readily understand why the latter should contain the same hereditary tendencies which were previously expressed in the flower which produced them. The fact that variations may occur in a single shoot depends on the changes explained above, which occur in the idio-plasm during the course of its growth, as a result of the varying proportions in which the ancestral idio-plasms may be contained in it.[30]