388 REPORT OF THE CONFERENCE ON GENETICS. 
HYBRIDISING AT THE ANTIPODES. 
By H. H. B. Brapuey, Sydney, Australia. 
NARCISSUS. 
Near Sydney the blooming season is generally about April to June for 
Polyanthus varieties, June to October for trumpets, July to October 
for Poeticus ; generally speaking,'the weather from April to July is fairly 
showery, August less so; September and October variable, often with 
very hot drying winds; and this seems to influence the setting of seed. 
Many of the Polyanthus set seed freely without artificial pollination : 
the early trumpets the same; the incomparables and late trumpets are 
bad seed-bearers, while the poeticus varieties are uncertain, sometimes 
setting freely, at other times badly. On the other hand, on the mountains 
where the season is later and the climate moister, such varieties as 
‘Emperor’ and ‘Sir Watkin’ set seed on nearly every bloom that is not 
cut ; with me ‘Sir Watkin’ has never seeded, and it has always been hard 
to get seed from ‘ Emperor’ ; but one wet September I got a lot of seed 
from ‘ Emperor’ by different crosses; in this case, of course, the flowers 
from which pollen was taken were cut early and kept indoors so as to get 
dry pollen. 
Working trumpets with pollen of polyanthus, I got any quantity of 
good ‘Tridymus,’ which here are hardy ; I used such varieties as ‘ Duchess 
of Albany,’ ‘Grand Monarque,’ and ‘ Soleil d’Or’ on‘ Countess Annesley,’ 
‘Princeps,’ ‘M.J. Berkley,’ &c.: all of these crosses gave ‘Tridymus’ and 
nothing else ; but using ‘ Paper White’ many of the seedlings were poly- 
anthus, the others being ‘Tridymus’ with white perianths and white or 
pale lemon corona. 
Crossing ‘ Paper White’ with pollen of trumpets, the result was only 
polyanthus, many being merely repetitions of the ‘Paper White’ seed- 
parent, while others were slightly improved forms of the seed-parent. 
Working such polyanthus as ‘ Apollo ’ and ‘ Gloriosa’ with pollen of 
Incomparabilis ‘John Bull,’ the seedlings so far are only polyanthus, 
some very much improved in size of perianth, and slightly (very little) 
lengthened corona, but lessened number of pips * to a head, while others 
were very poor degraded polyanthus with small pips and small heads; 
but in some of these degraded forms the colour influence of the pollen- 
parent was evident; in these cases the colour of the perianth, which in 
the seed-parent was white, in the seedling was yellow. In most of these 
crosses, the ‘ grass’ is more like that of the Incomparable, and the flower 
spathe appears almost simultaneously with the grass, opening when the 
* In a letter received from Mr. Bradley in October 1906 he says :—“ Please add 
a note. I spoke too hastily on the experience of one year’s flowering only, when the - 
pips were certainly, as stated, much fewer in number than in the seed parent. This 
year (1906) this has been entirely changed, and some of the heads have as many as 
twenty-three pips each. Generally the stamens are biseriate like the seed-parent, but 
in one of them the stamens are equal in length to Incomparable.’’—Eb. 
