LARGE PRODUCTION OF NEW GARDEN FORMS. •",.*).') 



ately adopted, nor have they depended on scientific researches. On the contrary, 

 chance observations made l»y growers in the course of their dealings with vegetable 

 life as it occurs in nature have been the means of suggesting the first unaided 

 attempts to make crops more productive, fruits and vegetables more palatable, and 



flowering plants more pleasing to the eye. 



The most important method adopted has been the artificial crossing of the 

 .species which are brought under cultivation. When we consider that, from time 

 immemorial, Chinese and Japanese gardeners have produced Asters, Chrysanthe- 

 mums. Camellias. Finks, Peonies, and Roses, of which the majority are the results of 

 crossing, we may assume with certainty that the practice of dusting flowers of one 

 species with the pollen of another species first came into use in those countries. It 

 is true that in Europe the contrivance was known to rose-growers at the time of 

 the Roman Empire, but it was not employed on an extensive scale till the seven- 

 teenth century, when the fashion for breeding Tulips and Auriculas became the 

 rage. The gardeners of that day still made a great secret of their mode of pro- 

 cedure, and it was not till the latter half of the eighteenth century that the 

 production of new forms of plants by the aid of artificial crossing was carried on 

 at all generally. For some decades the rearing of these new forms, which are 

 called hybrids, has been one of the most important parts of a gardener's duties, and 

 we shall not exaggerate if we put the number of hybrids hitherto produced in 

 gardens in the course of the nineteenth century at 10,000. Many hybrids which 

 were great favourites only a short time ago have disappeared from our gardens 

 and have been replaced by others. As in so many other matters, the fashion 

 changes; new forms are in constant request, and horticulturists endeavour to meet 

 the demand by introducing wild plants from the most various regions and crossing 

 them with those already under cultivation. It is now no longer uncommon for 

 gardeners, in advertising some plant -which has been brought from distant parts, to 

 recommend it to the trade, not on the ground of its own beauty, but because it 

 possesses flowers of an exceptional colour or leaves of a peculiar cut, and will there- 

 fore, in all probability, if crossed with other species, yield handsome new hybrids. 

 Rose-growers alw r ays welcome the discovery of any instance of variation in the Wild 

 Rose as an important event, because, by crossing this Rose with others, they are 

 able to produce a large number of new forms, and there is always the chance that 

 one or other of them may find favour with the public. On an average, 60 newly- 

 bred Roses come into the market yearly; in the year 1889 the number even 

 amounted to 115! A Rose cultivator at Meidling, near Vienna, grows in his garden 

 nearly 4200 different kinds of Rose, and yet he is still far from possessing all the 

 forms which have been produced in recent times (chiefly by French growers) by 

 crossing one with another. According to his estimate, the number of Tea and 

 Indian Itoses alone is nearly 1400, and the total number of all the different Roses 

 which the trade has produced up to the present day amounts to 6400. 



The plant-forms which are called into existence by the operation of crossing are, 

 in the case of Roses, reproduced largely by means of brood-bodies (cuttings and 



