SEED SAVING AND HYBRIDISATION. 91 



the more and the greater variety among them, the better of plants of the 

 highest excellence, with a suitable structure in which to flower them and 

 manipulate the blooms. This, as has been already directed in the chapters on 

 general culture, should be a light, roomy, and well-ventilated house, properly 

 heated, and, if possible, span-roofed, and situated in an open and sunny 

 spot. It should also be of a naturally dry nature, or capable of being at 

 any time allowed to become so, for neither can fertilisation be so successfully 

 performed, nor will the seed-containing pods so surely and perfectly set 

 and ripen, if there is any amount of latent dampness, as when the atmosphere is 

 fairly and reasonably dry. This becomes a very important factor in obtaining 

 a successful result with late-saved seed, which cannot be ripened at all 

 except in a dry and warm structure. All Begonia houses should therefore 

 be built entirely above ground, and well drained from any possible lodgment 

 of water in or near them. 



The seed-pods may bo "set," as it is termed, at any time that the plants 

 are in bloom, or from the month of May until the end of October, or nearly 

 so ; but there are reasons why the operation should not, if it can be avoided, 

 be performed either very early or very late in the season. In the first 

 place, it is bad policy to commence fertilising while the plants are still not 

 much advanced, particularly where a long succession of bloom is expected, 

 for nothing exhausts the plants more quickly or shortens the period of 

 flowering than the formation of seed-pods. Again, it is unwise either to 

 defer the operation until so late that the plants are past their best, and 

 the blooms and resultant seed-pods comparatively small and weak, when 

 the seed will be neither so plentiful nor so good as if it were saved at an earlier 

 stage ; or to leave it uutil the advent of the cold, damp, and often sunless 

 days of late autumn, which under ordinary circumstances will seriously inter- 

 fere with both successful fertilisation and the subsequent ripening of the pods 

 and seed. In high, warm, and dry situations it is, of course, quite possible 

 to save and ripen seed much later than in less favoured localities ; we have 

 seen splendid pods set in October, and even later, and gathered in good 

 condition near Christmas. 



A dry house, properly heated, and in a warm and favourable position, is a 

 great advantage to the hybridist, as it often enables him to obtain seed from 

 those plants, among the seedlings of the same year that do not arrive at a 

 flowering state until late in the season ; and among these are found, as has 

 been already remarked, some of the finest varieties of the whole batch. In 

 other words, the cultivator can thus work on the current year's stock, which 

 should be an advance upon that of the previous season, and thus a gain of 

 about a twelvemonth is practically effected. It may be remarked here, 

 that we do not consider it by any means advisable to obtain anything like a 

 heavy crop of seed from young plants raised the same year one or two pods 

 only should be allowed to set and ripen, or the result of the strain upon the im- 



