Jlcspcris Mafroiialis. 141 



experiment. It began in 1894 with seven plants which 

 had already flowered in 1893 and had been noted as 

 lilac flowered. Many of their flowers were more or less 

 striped, some of them produced in August the violet bud- 

 variations mentioned above, when the rest of the flowers 

 had been through blooming for a long time. Seed was 

 only saved from the lilac flowered branches ; a part of 

 it was sowed in August, the rest as soon as it was ripe. 

 Most of it germinated in the following February and 

 March; more than half of these plants produced stems 

 and flowered in August. I obtained altogether 234 plants 

 in flower of which 29% were pale, 57% were lilac and 

 14% normal violet. I selected the strongest plants from 

 among the most typical of each group and transplanted 

 them in the autumn to three as isolated spots as I could 

 find in my garden. Here they grew freely, branched 

 abundantly and flowered in the following year (1895) 

 for a second time. 



There were three violet plants which however set 

 very little seed. This was sown and the offspring flow- 

 ered in the summer of 1897 in a conservatory. I took 

 precautions to prevent their being visited by insects in 

 order to render impossible the transference of their 

 pollen to the other plants. As soon as the color of the 

 flowers could be determined w^ith certainty for any plant, 

 this was pulled up. There were, as I have already stated, 

 only five plants and their flowers were violet. 



I did not allow the lilac flowered plants to flow^er in 

 this year but kept them for the next. Of the plants with 

 pale flowers which had been planted out separately in the 

 autumn of 1895, only one plant flowered in 1896. Its 

 seeds were sown immediately and gave rise to 12 ])lants 

 which flowered in the summer of 1897; thev were all 



