Hcspcris Matronalis. 141 
experiment. It began in 1894 with seven plants which 
had already flowered in 1893 and had been noted as 
lilac flowered. Many of their flowers were more or less 
striped, some of them produced in August the violet bud- 
variations mentioned above, when the rest of the flowers 
had been through blooming for a long time. Seed was 
only saved from the lilac flowered branches; a part of 
it was sowed in August, the rest as soon as it was ripe. 
Most of it germinated in the following February and 
March; more than half of these plants produced stems 
and flowered in August. I obtained altogether 234 plants 
in flower of which 29% were pale, 57% were lilac and 
14% normal violet. I selected the strongest plants from 
among the most typical of each group and transplanted 
them in the autumn to three as isolated spots as I could 
find in my garden. Here they grew freely, branched 
abundantly and flowered in the following year (1895) 
for a second time. 
There were three violet plants which however set 
very little seed. This was sown and the offspring flow- 
ered in the summer of 1897 in a conservatory. I took 
precautions to prevent their being visited by insects in 
order to render impossible the transference of their 
pollen to the other plants. As soon as the color of the 
flowers could be determined with certainty for any plant, 
this was pulled up. There were, as I have already stated, 
only five plants and their flo\vers were violet. 
I did not allow the lilac flowered plants to flower in 
this year but kept them for the next. Of the plants with 
pale flowers w r hich had been planted out separately in the 
autumn of 1895, only one plant flowered in 1896. Its 
seeds \vere sown immediately and gave rise to 12 plants 
which flowered in the summer of 1897; they were all 
