VAi.TATioy OF Plants under Cultivation. 45 



spike, always stronger than the side branches, gave a much larger 

 proportion of single than double blooms. Some of the old-time 

 florists had peculiar ideas ; but in connection with this matter 

 their practices may not have been far wrong, though they were 

 often apparently absurd. Thus, an old Dutch florist who 

 flourished about the end of the fifteenth century recommended, 

 in order that Anemones with double flowers might be raised from 

 seed, that the following should be the practice : — The tubers 

 selected as the seed-bearers were to be kept for a year without 

 re-planting\ and the seeds they produced were to be soaked in 

 wine, and dried before they were sown. His further directions, 

 which had reference to the direction of the wind when the seeds 

 were saved and the stage of the moon when further operations 

 were completed, are too trivial for consideration, but it is possible 

 that the disturbing element introduced into the plant by its 

 remaining unplanted for a year, or the soaking or drying, may 

 have had something to do with the production of double flowers. 

 Anything which will affect the germ is likely to have the effect 

 of introducing that element which is at the root of the many 

 variations which are produced. 



One caimot quit this branch of one's topic without referring 

 to the curious fact that in some allied flowers the tendency to give 

 double flowers is less pronounced than it is in the case of others 

 belonging- to the same natural order. Among the Irids, for 

 instance, we have but few examples of double flowers. There 

 are, it is true, in an Iris known as Iris Kempferi, instances of 

 flowers with a few additional petals, but these are produced in 

 plants whose parents have probably been long- under a course of 

 cultivation by the Japanese. The Gladiolus has produced a 

 double variety, so has the Moutbretia ; but, so far as I can recol- 

 lect, these are the only flowers of that natural order which have 

 given these double blooms which are in existence. Why, we 

 may ask, does not the Crocus give us examples with double 

 blooms, seeing that it seeds so freely ? There is recorded an 

 example of a double Yellow Crocus, but no one alive seems to 

 have seen such a flower, though it is figured in an old sixteenth 

 century album in the British Museum. A good man}' other 

 bulbous plants give us double blooms, and the Natural Order 

 Liliace?e gives us double Colchicums, as well as some two or three 

 partially double Lilies. One may mention the double form of the 



