284 BULBS AND TUbEROUS-ROOTED PLANTS. 
ing at Zurich, after whom it was very appropriately 
named by Linneus. About a century after its first 
introduction, it became an object of commercial specula- 
tion, and enormous prices were paid for a single bulb. 
It is said that as much as $3,000 was offered and refused, 
in one instance. This mania ruined many of the Dutch 
florists, as well as other speculators who were more 
excited and reckless than the growers; but happily it 
subsided in the early part of the eighteenth century, and 
the propagation and trade in the Tulip assumed a healthy 
tone; the industry rapidly increased until the present 
time, when, in Holland, more than seven hundred acres 
are devoted to its culture. 
This class of Tulips has been grown from seed by 
the millions, and the named varieties are so great that 
it would be impossible to enumerate them ; one dealer 
alone boasts of more than eighteen hundred varieties. 
The ease with which the Tulip can be grown from seed 
stimulated production to a wonderful extent, the result 
of which is a vast number of superb varietics. The 
method of growing the Tulip from seed is, in many 
respects, unlike that of any other plant. There is a sin- 
gularity about it exclusively its own. The seedlings, 
generally, when they first bloom, produce flowers with- 
out any stripes or markings; a yellow or white bottom, 
and all the upright portion of the petals self-colored, 
brown, red, purple, scarlet, or rose, and in this condition 
they remain a number of years without any variegations ; — 
they are then called Breeders, or Mother Tulips. ‘These 
Breeders are planted every year until they ‘‘ break” into 
stripes, and if they prove desirable they are named, if 
not, they are thrown into the class known as mixtures ; 
but it takes so many years, sometimes, before the 
“breaking” occurs, that they are multiplied largely in 
the breeder state, that is, in self colors, and are dissem- 
inated im all directions as ‘‘selfs”; many of these we 
