148 FLOWER-GARDENING. 



insipid fruit may possibly be improved (204), or may be the 

 means of improving something else. 



240. It is very much upon such considerations as the fore- 

 going that the rules of training must depend. 



IX. SEED. 



241. The seed is the ovulum arrived at perfection. 



242. It consists of an integument inclosing an embryo, which 

 is the rudiment of a future plant. 



243. The seed is nourished by the same means as the fruit, 

 and, like it, will be more or less perfectly formed, according to 

 the abundance of its nutriment. 



244. The plant developed from the embryo in the seed will 

 be in all essential particulars like its parent species. 



245. Unless its nature has been changed by hybridizing 

 (204). 



246. But although it will certainly, under ordinary circum- 

 stances, reproduce its species, it will by no means uniformly 

 reproduce the particular variety by which it was borne. 



247. So that seed are not the proper means of propagating 

 varieties. 



248. Nevertheless, in annual or biennial plants no means can 

 be employed for propagating a variety except the seed ; and 

 yet the variety is preserved. 



249. This is accomplished solely by the great care of the 

 cultivator, and happens thus : 



250. Although a seed will not absolutely propagate the indi- 

 vidual, yet as a seed will partake more of the nature of its 

 actual parent than of. anything else, its progeny may be 

 expected, as really happens, to resemble the variety from which 

 it sprang more than any other variety of its species. 



251. Provided its purity has not been contaminated by the 

 intermixture of other varieties. 



252. By a careful eradication of all the varieties from the 

 neighborhood of that from which seed is to be saved; by 



