VIII. On the Examination of a Hybrid Digitalis. 



By the Rev. J. S. HENSLOW, M. A. 



PROFESSOR OF BOTANY, AND SECRETARY TO THE CAMBRIDGE 

 PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY. 



[Read Nov. 14, 1831.] 



Although the propagation of hybrid plants has been much 

 attended to of late years by several Horticulturists in England, 

 their experiments, for the most part, seem to have been under- 

 taken for the sole object of encreasing the forms of beautiful 

 flowers, or of modifying the flavour of delicious fruits. But the 

 more curious and important physiological facts elicited by the 

 phenomenon of hybrid productions do not appear to have received 

 a proportionate degree of attention from those who have been 

 engaged in these experiments. Chance having favoured me with 

 a hybrid Digitalis during the past summer (1831), in my own 

 garden, I employed myself, whilst it continued to flower, which 

 was from June 19 to July 22, in daily examining its characters 

 and anatomizing its parts of fructification. I was careful to com- 

 pare my observations, with as much patience and accuracy as 

 I can command, with the structure of its two parents. It seemed 

 to me not unlikely that something interesting might result from 

 a rigorous examination of this kind, or at least that its recorded 

 details might serve as a point of departure for future observa- 

 tions. 



Vol. IV. Part II. K k 



