147 
The work with the iris project led to hybridization between 
different varieties and species. A particularly valuable discovery 
was made in the hybridization of iris which had been collected in 
Southern United States, particularly in Louisiana. Previous to 
1920, only a few species of iris were known in the South. Soon 
after 1920, however, a large number of different kinds of iris of 
the Fulva-Foliosa group were discovered by botanists and recorded 
as species new to science. Hybridization experiments carried on 
at the Botanic Garden between the two species—/ris fulva and J. 
folicosa—led to the production, in the second and later generations, 
of a wide range of forms differing in vegetative and flower char- 
acters. The conclusion has been reached that probably most of the 
—" 
so-called “new species” described from Louisiana are merely hy- 
brids between two or three species, which have been known for 
a long time. An excellent set of watercolors of these has also 
been made by the artists already mentioned. 
The first Resident Investigator at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden 
was Dr. Ralph E. Benedict, appointed in April, 1916. He was 
especially interested in the ferns, and undertook an investigation 
of the horticultural variations of the Boston fern, for which space 
was furnished in the Botanic Garden greenhouses. Grants from 
the American Association for the Advancement of Science made 
establishments, most of the new 
possible visits to the fern growers’ 
types having appeared in greenhouses around the larger eastern 
cities. Through correspondence, every reported new type was 
obtained, from as far south as Louisiana and as far west as Col- 
orado, and later from England and France, where similar series 
of new types had appeared. Later, the Garden’s own series of 
spore-produced variations were developed from a single Boston 
— 
fern type which was spore-fertile. 
This study was begun at an opportune time, since the first 
interest in the new Boston fern sports had arisen in the late 
nineties with the appearance of the Boston fern itself near Cam- 
bridge, Mass., and two or three other new forms near Boston and 
New York. By 1915, the search for new variations was at its 
height, because of the possible commercial value of the new types. 
The studies of the variations of the Boston fern, a most dis- 
tinctive phenomenon in the field of genetics, have been published 
in several papers. 
