gress by some other Narcissean plant, but I doubt the accu- 

 racy of his experiment, from the repeated results of my own. 

 Where the sterile Narcissi are found in a wild state, they arc 

 remnants of ancient gardens, or found on spots where a bulb 

 has been accidentally dropt and found a congenial situation. 

 The double daffodil is accordingly found wild in many places, 

 and the fertile daffodils of England and Wales may have been 

 introduced by Roman or even Phoenician gardening. They 

 have more the appearance of having been originally located, 

 than of having naturally chosen their own localities. The 

 exact Roman Tazetta is naturalized on Lady Grenville's estate 

 in Cornwall. 



It will be observed that the Narcissi seem to be quite ano- 

 malous plants. I know of no genus, which exhibits such a diver- 

 sity in the most important parts, as Ajax with its enormous cup, 

 straight anthers, and robust awl-shaped filaments inserted at 

 its base, and Narcissus verus with the short wide cup, curved 

 anthers, and filiform filaments inherent in the texture of the 

 tube, still less in which such plants are capable of interbreeding 

 ad infinitum, and imposing their mongrel produce upon botan- 

 ists as natural species, and even as genera connecting the widely 

 separate forms of the true natural sections or species. How are 

 we to deal with them in our nomenclature ? In truth Ajax, 

 narcissus verus, Hermione, jonquilla, Ganymedes, should be 

 considered as species, of which there are (at least of the three 

 first) a vast many distinct and permanent local varieties. It 

 may perhaps be convenient, as the genus is so anomalous, to 

 set them down as sections, but in truth I consider the difference 

 between a botanical species and permanent local variety to 

 be little more than nominal and arbitrary. I impregnated 

 nine flowers of A. minor by jonquill this spring, and others by 

 a fertile Hermione, N. montanus, and Spofforthia?, and all 

 have produced strong seed pods. Some of the old crosses 

 seem to have been lost, and it is not clear that any decidedly 

 new intermixture has been raised till lately in the last two 

 centuries ; which gives reason to suppose that M. Franqueville 

 of Cambray, mentioned by Parkinson, or some other cultivator, 

 at or before that period, had discovered the secret of the cross- 

 breeding, and made a profit by the sale of his novelties, and 

 that his secret died with him. It is now known that the late 

 Mr. Rollisson of Tooting raised many Ericse by cross-breed- 



