372 SELECTING AND IMPROVING PLANTS IN CULTURE. 



difficulties to contend with : he has to combine hardiness, robustness 

 of character, and early maturity with the improvements of high culti- 

 vation. Nature has, however, in some measure pointed out the path 

 he is to pursue ; and if it be followed with patience and industry, no 

 obstacles will be found which may not be either removed or surmounted. 

 If two plants of the vine, or other tree of similar habits, or even if 

 obtained from cuttings of the same tree, were placed to vegetate during 

 several successive seasons in very different climates ; if the one were 

 planted on the banks of the Rhine, and the other on those of the Nile, 

 each would adapt its habits to the climate it which it was placed ; 

 and if both were subsequently brought in early spring into a climate 

 similar to that of Italy, the plant which had adapted its habits to a cold 

 climate would instantly vegetate, whilst the other would remain torpid. 

 It appears that the powers of vegetable life in plants habituated to cold 

 climates are more easily brought into action than in those of hot 

 climates ; or, in other words, that the plants of cold climates are most 

 excitable : and as every quality in plants becomes hereditary to some 

 extent, it follows that their seedling offspring have a constant tendency 

 to adopt or exaggerate the peculiarities of their recent or remote 

 parentage. 



Selection. An individual wild plant being thus improved, the next 

 step is to sow its seeds under the most favourable circumstances of 

 soil and situation, and from the plants so produced to select such, or 

 perhaps only one, or even a pa.rt of one, which possesses in the highest 

 degree the qualities we are in search of. This plant being carefully 

 cultivated, its seeds are to be sown, and a selection made from the 

 plants produced as before. By such means, most of our garden plants 

 have been improved. Plain-leaved parsley has become superbly curled ; 

 plain Scotch kail beautifully variegated; and cauliflowers, peas, potatoes, 

 turnips, &c. enlarged in size and improved in quality. The same 

 means have been used with fruits, and with equal success. Many of our 

 varieties of grapes, Hambro's especially, probably owe their origin to 

 selection ; and it is doubtless to a careful selection of the best parents 

 that we owe the many splendid new peaches and nectarines that Mr. 

 Rivers has given us of late years. 



Selecting from Accidental Variations, or, as they are technically 

 termed, Sports. Among a great number of seedlings raised in gardens, 

 or of plants in a wild state, some entire plants, or parts of plants, will 

 exhibit differences in form or colour from the normal form and colour 

 of the species. Among these peculiarities may be noticed double 

 flowers, flowers of a colour different from those of the species, variegated 

 leaves, leaves deeply cut where the normal form is entire, as in the 

 fern-leaved beech ; and even the entire plant may be of more diminutive 

 size, or its shoots may take a different direction, as in fastigiate and 

 pendulous-branched trees. All these, and many other accidental 

 variations, which cannot generally be reproduced from seed, may 

 be perpetuated by cuttings, or some other mode of propagating by 

 division. 



Cross-breeding. This process is effected by fecundating the stigma of 



