34 AMERICAN CARNATION CULTURE. 



Nature's laws of proportion are not guided by the optimistic 

 prophecies of cross-fertilizers. Four-inch flowers are reached, 

 but not on woody plants with narrow foliage and procumbent 

 habit, but on plants with broad fleshy leaves, great stems, mon- 

 strous nodes and fibrous roots feeding on gross humus, flourishing 

 in great heat, and circulating an immense volume of vegetable blood. 



Variation is a basic law of nature, the primal source of 

 varieties, and the foundation of the cross-fertilizer's art. Some 

 species of plants possess the varietal tendency stronger than others. 

 Self-pollenization is no security against plant diversity. Mr. H. 

 Vetch asserts that wheat is self- fertilizing, that the poUenization is 

 effected in the bud and fecundation is impossible from foreign 

 sources, yet new varieties of wheat are constantly occuring in a 

 field, where all plants are surrounded with precisely the same con- 

 ditions. 



The grosser structures of a new carnation are more easily 

 secured by the selection of male and female parents, than are color 

 and fragrance. Mr. Chas. T. Starr, obtained Buttercup, Duke of 

 Orange, Lady Chatting, Venus and Field of Gold, from a batch of 

 seeds crossed by Edwardsii, La Puritie and Astoria. It is a sing- 

 ular fact that most of Mr. Starr's fifty fine introductions belong 

 to the variegated class of colors, while other fertilizers have 

 been most successful with solid strains of colors. A new carna- 

 tion, be it an artificial cross or self-fertihzed, cannot possess precise- 

 ly the same nature as either of its parents. There is a co- ming- 

 ling of sexual cells in the crypt of conception, to start a new life, 

 which is the unified product of the vital essence of different 

 parents, which must give it an idiosyncracy distinctively its own. 

 The carnation belongs to a class of plants that matures the 

 pollen before the pistil is ready to receive it. Nature revolts at 

 self-fertilization, and this provision in plants is a protest against 

 inbreeding. It gives time for the flowers to be fecundated by 

 foreign pollen, and only in default of this fact does it accept its 

 own pollen. This interval between the maturity of the pollen 

 and pistil of the same flower wonderfully favors the operations 

 of artificial cross-fertilization. 



