258 PRACTICAL GARDENING. 



manner of combinations. Then we have a large family of the 

 fuchsias, of which very few were known until the importation 

 of Fuchsia fulgens, which was at first doubted, but proved to 

 be a fuchsia by the readiness ^vith which it crossed the old 

 varieties, and produced modifications, as varied as could be 

 wished. It was by crossing two species of calceolaria that 

 Mr. Green obtained his enormous flowers on the herbaceous 

 kind of plants, and seeding again from these varieties, crossed 

 as Mature crosses them, is annually introducing still greater 

 removes from the originals, until the difference in colour, 

 habit, form of flower and fohage, to be found in every batch 

 of seedlings, is giving rise to an endless catalogue of arbitrary 

 names with which these numerous varieties are dignified. 

 It is the first remove that deserves the credit ; the seed saved 

 afterwards continues to produce novelties, and such as are 

 worth naming and propagating are advertised and sold out 

 from year to year ; we wish we could not add, " and a good 

 many "^ that are worthless." We might go through many 

 famihes, in all of which changes have been made by a mix- 

 ture of breeds, in the greater part of which, however, l^ature 

 has been her own director, although people have taken credit 

 for artificial fertihzation. Time after time we have been 

 favoured with several supposed species, as in the dahlia, for 

 instance, when the white, the dirty yellow, and the purple, 

 were honoured with such distinction because of some trumpery 

 difference which ordinary observers could not see, except the 

 colour of the bloom, which we have had reason to know is 

 not constant. A new colour imported from abroad was a 

 botanical wonder, a new species. Now, had these species been 

 really weU named, — that is, had they been really species,— 

 there might have been some credit in hybridizing, as it is 

 called, and the thousand of varieties we have produced had 

 been creditable hybrids ; but the fact is, that I^ature has her 

 seedling varieties as well as her species, and it is time we 

 imported things by their proper classification, and avoid giving 

 merely seedling varieties the dignity of distinct species. The 

 English florists, however, very soon settle the fate of so-caUed 

 species, and knock about botanical distinctions very sadly. 

 The Fuchsia fulgens was like a species ; it difi'ered so much 

 in fohage, habit, and flower, that there were those who doubted 

 its being a fuchsia at all. This was soon settled by our inde- 

 fatigable raisers of new varieties — some of whom take un- 



