Mr. Munson kindly sends us from Denison, Texas, flowering branches of the Blackman and other varieties supposed to be hybrids. To our mind they are all simply sports - the Blackman indeed may be termed a monstrosity - with no sign of hybridity about them.

The plum may be always distinguished from the peach by precocious activity in the cork-cells, which results in the sloughing off of the external cuticle before the branch is a full year old, giving a plum branch a silvery tint. All of these had this character, and we should call them all true plums. The Blackman is a singular monstrosity. The sepals and petals are little more than bud scales, while the centre of the flower is made up of what appears to be a mass of independent carpels, that one might take for pistils if they were in some other genus of plants. They are really intermediates between stamens and pistils, and would, we think, very much interest vegetable teratologists. There appear to be two of these abnormal flowers in each flower bud, as is common to plums. We see nothing to suggest any hybridization with a peach.

Your card of the 5th was received, and the article of Prof. Munson on plums and peach hybrids and your comments on same in Gardeners' Monthly read. No one denies that there are sports and monstrosities, and it is very certain that there are hybrids. If fertility in hybrids is the rule, I should be glad to be set right in my ideas by a statement of facts and cases. The H. P. roses are usually sterile. I knew from observation in Kansas, of a guinea hen laying eggs that were fertilized by a black Spanish cock, (chicken) several of which hatched and three of them lived. One that I knew was a female and laid eggs but none of them ever hatched, although often tried.

All the mules between Muscovy and other ducks that I have ever known were sterile. Because your case of Halesia and others which you and all of us know to be monstrosities in both the vegetable and animal kingdom exist as facts, it is no reason that the cases Mr. Munson gives are not mules.

I think it is advisable to be very cautious regarding all these matters and I know you are working on that plan. Perhaps we will arrive at definite conclusions in due time.

U. S. Pomologist. Washington, D. C.

[Mr. Van Deman must have overlooked the fact stated in the Editor's remarks, that the structure of the flowers that he examined - the structure of the flowers - proved it to be a monstrosity and not a hybrid.

As to the fertility of hybrids in the vegetable kingdom, it seems strange that a Department like that of Agriculture at Washington does not keep on record the progressive literature of a subject like this. Mr. Van Deman could then be easily set right in his ideas by statements of facts and cases, already abundantly exemplified. We would suggest that among other documents the Department purchase a copy of the New York Independent of August 21 st, 1884, if it does not already have access to the original papers on which that exhaustive essay is founded. We think no one can read that paper without being convinced that there is no foundation whatever for the sweeping generalization that hybrids are usually sterile. Certainly no one has ventured to show that the conclusions reached in the essay referred to are not sound. Certainly there are sterile hybrids, as there are sterile pairs, and even sterile families in the same species, but it would be just as fair in the face of the numerous facts to the contrary, to say in the latter case that mankind is generally sterile, as to assert the general sterility of hybrids. - Ed. G. M].

Mr. Hillenmeyer kindly sends us specimens of his hybrid Plums. The flowers are exactly like those sent to us by Mr. Munson, from Denison, as the Blackman, and are simply monstrous flowers, and not the result of hybridization, so far as we can understand. It is simply a case of abnormal carpellary development.