66 PLANT HYBRIDIZATION BEFORE MENDEL 



at this Day in every curious Flower Garden; for I have saved the 

 Seeds of near an hundred plain Auricula s, whose flowers were of one 

 Colour, and stood remote from others, and the Seed I remember to 

 have produced no Variety; but on the other hand, where I have saved 

 the Seed of such plain Auricula's as have stood together and were dif- 

 fering in their colours, that Seed has furnished me with great Varieties, 

 different from the Mother Plants." 



In 1731, Philip Miller, in the first edition of his "Gardeners' 

 Dictionary" (7), reported upon a repetition of Bradley's experi- 

 ment with tulips, and also upon an experiment with spinach, in 

 which plants of the two sexes, grown apart, resulted in the pro- 

 duction of seeds devoid of embryos. 



Miller (1692-1771), was Governor to the Apothecaries' Com- 

 pany, from 1722 to 1770, at the Chelsea Gardens near London. 



In 1724, he published "The Gardeners' and Florists' Diction- 

 ary, or a Complete System of Horticulture," of which Linnaeus 

 said, "non erit lexicon hortulanorum sed botanicorum." The work 

 went through eight editions during his lifetime. It is said of it 

 that while before its appearance not more than a thousand species 

 of plants were in cultivation, at his death there were more than 

 five thousand. He was a correspondent of Linnaeus, who visited 

 the Chelsea Garden several times, when in England in 1736. The 

 seventh edition of "The Gardeners' Dictionary," in 1759, con- 

 tained twice as many plants as the first edition, and adopted the 

 nomenclature of Linnaeus. The account here given of Miller's ex- 

 periment is taken from the 1759 edition, from the chapter (un- 

 paged) entitled "Generation." 



"I shall therefore conclude with mentioning a few Experiments of 

 my own, which I communicated to Dr. Patrick Blair, which he improved 

 as Proof of his opinion of Effluvia, and Mr. Bradley also, as a Proof of 

 the Fari?ia entering the Uterus in Substance, and leave the curious En- 

 quirer to determine on that Side of the Question, to which Reasoning 

 and Experiment shall influence him. 



"I separated the male Plants of a Bed of Spinach from the female ; 

 and the Consequence was that the Seed did swell to the usual Bigness, 

 but when sown it did not grow afterwards ; and searching into the Seed 

 I found it wanted the Punctum Vitae (or what Geoffrey calls the 

 Germen). 



"I set twelve Tulips by themselves, about six or seven yards from 

 any other and, as soon as they blew, I took out the Stamina (with their 

 Summits) so very carefully, that I scattered none of the male Dust; 

 and about two days afterwards I saw Bees working on a bed of tulips, 

 where I did not take out the stamina ; and when they came out they 

 were loaded with the farina or male dust on their legs and bodies; 

 and I saw them fly into the tulips where I had taken out the stamina, 



