PHYTOGAMY. 241 



PHYTOGAMY. 



If this name has not been coined ah^eady it ought to be. 

 For " the loves of the plants," so mellifluously sung by Dr. 

 Erasmus Darwin in the days of our grandfathers, have been 

 in our time, through a felicitous atavism, more scientifically, if 

 prosaically, expounded by his grandson, in a series of articles 

 and volumes, of which the subjoined are the principal titles.^ 

 If we have too long delayed our notice of these books, we 

 make amends by calling attention to them at the season which 

 invites and amply rewards the observations in field and garden 

 which they suggest. Mainly in consequence of these writings, 

 the subject which our new word connotes, namely, the connu- 

 bial relations of plants, has become a popular and fruitful 

 branch of biological science, which has its own laws and rules 

 and technical terms, its distinction of legitimate and illegiti- 

 mate unions, and tables of forbidden degrees. For example, 

 it is not lawful, at least it is not en regie nor beneficial, for 

 " thrum-eyed " Primroses to interbreed, nor for " pin-eyed " 

 Primroses to Interbreed. Such are illegitimate unions, seldom 

 blessed with progeny. To the uncurious observer in Words- 

 worth's poem, — 



" A primrose by a river's brim 

 A yellow primrose was to him, 

 And it was nothing more." 



But as concerns the Primrose, where seed-bearing is in 

 question, if it be one of the thrum-eyed stock, the pollen 

 brought to it must come from the pin-eyed, and vice vei'sa, in 

 order to secure full fertility. Tiny blue-eyed Houstonias, en- 

 amelling our meadows in early spring, and fragrant Mitchel- 

 las, carpeting Pine-woods in midsummer, are in a similar case. 

 It is this kind of arrangement for cross-breeding to which 



^ The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species. — The 

 Various Contrivances by which Orchids are Fertilized by Insects. Second 

 Edition, revised. — The Effects of Cross and Self-Fertilization in the Vege- 

 table Kingdom. By Charles Darwin. London and New York, 1876-77. 

 (The Nation, No. 667, April 11, 1878.) 



