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 idioplasm of the first ontogenetic stage (germ-plasm), 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 chiefly depend upon 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 idioplasm, when it developes 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 idioplasm 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 upon the changes explained above, which occur in the idioplasm during the course of its growth, as a result of the varying proportions in which the ancestral idioplasms may be contained in it. Fritz Müller’s observation affords a beautiful confirmation of this view, for if the flower itself transmitted the hexamerous condition to its germ-cells, we could not understand why some of the extremely rare hexamerous flowers were produced by the crossing of two pentamerous flowers, in the control experiment. An explanation of this fact can only be found in the assumption that the germ-plasm contained in the mother plant, during its growth and consequent distribution through all the branches of the colony, became arranged into a combination of idioplasms, which, whenever it predominated (as it did at certain places), necessarily led to the formation of hexamerous flowers. I will not consider here the question as to whether this combination is to be looked upon as an instance of reversion, or whether it represents something new. Such a question is of no importance for our present purpose; but the hexamerous flowers of the control experiment prove, in my opinion, that germ-plasm containing the requisite combination was distributed in the mother plant and also existed, but in insufficient amount, in shoots which did not produce any hexamerous flowers. Appendix V. On the Origin of Parthenogenesis[227].