CROSSING. 83 



primarily the wish to re-combine valuable characters which the 

 new introduction may possess, with the qualities of the species 

 in cultivation, but almost exclusively to break up the con- 

 stancy, the purity, the lack of variability of the species on hand. 

 The object of crossing is to produce variability, and the object 

 of producing variability is to obtain the material for selections. 



A newly imported wild-daffodil, or a new Gladiolus, or a new 

 primrose, is hailed as an important find by the specialists. And 

 the question which the knowing ones ask, is not whether it has 

 desirable new characters, but whether it is new, that is, 

 whether or not it has already been crossed into the domestic 

 species of daffodils, or roses, or primroses. If it has not been 

 usedbefore, the chances are, that the variability which crossing 

 with it will produce, will cause novelties to appear later on, 

 which will be real novelties, and not only reproductions of 

 things seen before or re-combinations of qualities of domestic 

 species. In other words new species are sought by horticult- 

 urists which will heighten the potential variability of their 

 stock. In some few instances hybrids will be produced, which 

 as a group have some distinctive set of characters, which will 

 set them apart from all the parent-species which went into the 

 combination. In such a case the horticulturists will not name 

 this group of hybrids after one parent group, but they will give 

 a new name to the group, mostly the name of the genus com- 

 bined with "hybridum". 



In most instances however, a group of novel plants which 

 thanked its origin to crosses with different species, will be 

 named after the main parent species. And horticulturists will 

 speak and write about new hybrids in Primula obconica or new 

 hybrids in the Shirley poppy. 



It is very evident to anyone who studies the work of those 

 horticulturists and amateurs, who pride themselves upon the 

 production of novel plants, that very often very valuable Fj 

 hybrid plants are thrown away because they are not in them- 

 selves remarkable, but which should have been preserved as 

 the potential parents of the desired novelties. This one point, 



