56 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
Strawberries to Savoys, the work of the cross-breeder is seen improving 
the quality and the quantity of our products, adapting them to different 
climates and conditions, hastening their production in spring, prolonging 
their duration inautumn.* Surely inthese matters we have outdistanced 
our ancestors. 
But let us not forget that they showed us the way. Ido not propose 
to dilate on the share which Camerarius, Millington, Grew, Morland, and 
others at the close of the seventeenth century had in definitely establish- 
ing the fact of sexuality in plants; but I do wish to emphasise the fact 
that it was by experiment, not by speculation, nor even by observation, 
that the fact was proved; and I do wish to show that our English 
gardeners and experimenters were even at that time quite aware of the 
importance of their discovery, and forestalled our Herbert and Darwin in 
the inferences they drew from it. In proof of which allow me to quote 
from a work of Richard Bradley, called ‘‘ New Improvements of Planting 
and Gardening, both Philosophical and Practical,’ published in 1717, 
cap. ii. After alluding to the discovery of the method of the fertilisation 
of plants, he says (p. 22) :— 
“ By this knowledge we may alter the property and taste of any fruit 
by impregnating the one with the farina of another of the same class; as, 
for example, a Codlin with a Pearmain, which will occasion the Codlin so 
impregnated to last a longer time than usual, and be of a sharper taste ; 
or if the winter fruits should be fecundated with the dust of the summer 
kinds they will decay before their usual time; and it is from this acci- 
dental coupling of the farina of one with the other that in an orchard 
where there is variety of Apples even the fruits gathered from the same 
tree differ in their flavour and times of ripening ; and, moreover, the seeds 
of those Apples so generated, being changed by that means from their 
natural qualities, will produce different kinds of fruit if they are sown. 
“Tis from this accidental coupling that proceeds the numberiess 
varieties of fruits and flowers which are raised every day from 
seed 
‘Moreover, a curious person may by this knowledge produce such 
rare kinds of plants as have not yet been heard of by making choice of 
two plants for his purpose, as are near alike in their parts, but chiefly in 
their flowers or seed vessels; for example, the Carnation and Sweet 
William are in some respects alike : the farina of the one will impregnate 
the other, and the seed so enlivened will produce a plant differing from 
either, as may now be seen in the garden of Mr. Thomas Fairchild, of 
Hoxton, a plant neither Sweet William nor Carnation, but resembling 
both equally, which was raised from the seed of a Carnation that had 
been impregnated by the farina of the Sweet William.”’ 
Here we have the first record of an artificially produced hybrid, and 
you will remark that this was more than forty years before Kolreuter 
began his elaborate series of experiments. Fairchild was the friend and 
associate of Philip Miller, and of a small knot of ‘‘advanced”’ thinkers, 
* See some interesting observations of MacFarlane on the period of flowering in 
hybrids as intermediate between that of the parents, Gardeners’ Chronicle, June 20, 
1891; and on the structure of hybrids, May 3, 1890. : 
