' Here then is a new field open for botanists^ and a number of new varieties may be 

 raised by artificial impregnation, ^\- and if what I have WTitten meets with your approba- 



•\ A new cabbage is described in the Bath Agriculture, Yol. I. Art. 4. which is said to fatten a beast six weeks sooner than turneps. 

 It is there said, " that the sort of cabbage principally raised, is the tallow-loaf, or drum-headed cahhage ; but it being too tender to bear 

 sharp frost, I planted some of tins sort and the common purple-cahbage used for pickling, (it being the hardiest I am acquainted with) 

 alternately; and when the seed-pods were perfectly formed, I cut down the purple, and left the other for seed. This had the desired effect, 

 and produced a mixt stock of a deep green colour with purple veins, retaining the size of the drum head, and acquiring the hardiness of 



the purple.'' 



In another curious paper of the Bath Society, Yol. V. p. 38. Mr. Wimpey relates, that he planted a field with garden-beans in rows 

 about three feet asunder in the following order, niazagan, white-blossom, long-podded, Sandwich-toker, and Windsor -beans. The maza- 

 ran and white-blossom were thrashed first, when to his great surprise he found many new species of beans ; those from the mazagan were 

 mottled black and white; the white blossoms were brown and yellow instead of their natural black; and they were both much larger 

 than usual. 



Mr. Knight has given a curious experiment of his impregnating the stigmas of the pea-blossoms of one variety with the farina of another. 

 He says, Yide his Treatise on ihe Apple and Pear, p. 42, " Blossoms of a small white garden-pea, in which the males had previously been de- 

 stroyed, were impregnated with the farina of a large clay-coloured kind wiih purple blossoms. The produce of the seeds thus obtained were 

 of a dark grey colour, but these having no fixed habits, were soon changed by cultivation into a numerous variety of very large and extremely 

 luxuriant white ones ; which were not only much larger and more productive than the original white ones, hut the number of seeds in each 

 pod was increased from seven or eight, to eight or nine, and not unfrequently to ten. The newly made grey kinds I found were easily made 

 white again by impregnating their blossoms with the farina of another white kind. In this experiment the seeds, which grew towards the 

 point of the pod, and were by position first exposed to the action of the male, would sometimes produce seeds like it in colour, whilst those 

 at the other end would follow the female. 



" In other instances the whole produce of the pod would take the colour of one or other of the parents; and I had once an instance in 

 which two peas at one end of a pod produced white seeds like the male, two at the other end grey ones like the female, and the central seeds 

 look the intermediate shade, a clay colour. Something very similar appears to take place in animals, which produce many young ones at a 

 birth, when the male and female are of opposite colours. From some very imperfect experiments I have made, I am led to suspect that con- 

 siderable advantages would be found to arise from the use of new or regenerated varieties of wheat, and these are easily obtained, as this plant 

 readily sports in varieties, whenever different kinds are sown together." 



This practice of the very ingenious Mr. Knight is not, however, a new one, for it vi^as recommended by Bradley as far back 

 as 1736. 



" By this knowledge," says Bradley, " we may perhaps alter the property and taste of any fruit, by impregnating the one with the 

 farina of another of the same class : as, for example, a Codlin with a Pearmain, which will occasion the Codlin so impregnated to last a 

 longer time than usual, and be of a sharper taste; or if the winter fruits should be fecundated with the dust of the summer kinds, they will 

 decay before their usual time : and it is from this accidental coupling of the farina of one with the other, that in an orchard where there is 

 variety of apples, even the fruit gathered from the same tree differ in their flavour and times of ripening : and moreover, the seeds of those 

 apples so generated, being changed by that means from their natural qualities, wall produce different kinds of fruits, if they are sown. 



" It is from this accidental coupling, that proceeds the numberless varieties of fruits and flowers which are raised every day from seed. 

 The yellow and purple Auriculas, which were the first we had in England, coupling with one another, produced seed which gave us other 

 varieties ; which again mixing their qualities in like manner, has afforded us, by little and little, the numberless variations which we see at 

 this day in every curious flower-garden ; for I have saved the seeds of near a hundred plain Auriculas, whose flowers were of one colour, and 

 stood remote from others, and that seed I remember to have produced no variety: but on the other hand, where I have saved the seed of such 

 plain Auriculas as have stood together, and were differing in their colours, that seed has furnished me with great varieties, different from the 

 mother plants. I believe I need not explain how the male dust of plants may be conveyed by air from the one to another, by which this gene- 

 ration and production of new plants is brought about; but I shall hint by the bye, to such as plant orchards for cyder, that they ought to 

 plant only one sort oi apple in those orchards; and that such plantations be likewise remote from other kinds of apples, whose farina would 

 else certainly spoil the cyder-fruit, by ripening some sooner, and others later, which would occasion almost a continual ferment in the liquor, 

 and never permit it to settle or grow fine. 



" Moreover, a curious person may, by this knowledge, produce such rare kinds of plants, as have not yet been heard of, by making 

 choice of two plants for his purpose, as near alike in their parts, but chiefly in their flowers or seed-vessels : for example, the Carnation and 

 Sweet William are in some respects alike ; the farina of the one will impregnate the other, and the seed so enlivened will produce a plant 

 differing from either, as may now be seen in the garden of Mr. Thomas Fairchild of Hoxton, a plant neither Sweet William nor Carnation, 

 but resembling both equally, which was raised from the seed of a Carnation that had been impregnated by the farina of the Sweet William. 

 These couplings are not unlike that of the mare with the ass, which produces the mule ; and in regard to generation, are also the same with 

 mules, if of different kinds, not being able to multiply their species, no more than other monsters generated in the same manner. 



" We may learn from hence, that the fruit of any tree may be adulterated as well by the farina of one of the same sort, which perhaps 

 may be sickly, and of a dwarf kind, as by the dust of some other kind near akin to it, and worse than itself. Now, as such couplings may 

 be very frequent in common woods, so would I recommend the choice of seed to be made only from such plants or timber-trees as excel in 

 greatness, or other good qualities, and are far distant from others of meaner sorts, which might degenerate their seeds, and cross our expec- 

 tations when they come to grow up; and this is as necessary to be observed among vegetables, to maintain their good qualities in the young 

 plants they are to produce, as it is in the breeding of g-ame-cocfc^, spaniels, or running-horses.'' 



There is an apple described in Bradley's work, which is said to have one side of it a sweet fruit, which boils soft, and the other side a 

 sour fruit, which boils hard. This Mr. Bradley so long ago as the year 1721 ingeniously ascribes to the farina of one of these apples impreg- 

 nating the other ; which would seem the more probable, if we consider, that each division of an apple is a separate womb, and may therefore 

 have a separate impregnation, like puppies of different kinds in one litter. The same is said to have occurred in oranges and lemons, and grapes 

 of different colours. 



I have seen myself a curious instance of a Nectarine Tree produce its fruit half Nectarine half Peach. 



^ DUHAMEL 



