AND THEIR CULTURE. 197 



of woody fibre, and then it becomes almost fossilised, somewhat like the 

 hardened root-stock. of the Common Ginger. The scar A was left on the 

 core in 1877, more than twelve months ago, but a double one I met with 

 three weeks ago, in the presence of a friend, showed that the outer one 

 must have been the scar of 1876, left there more than two years ago. If, 

 then, in our own country, we sometimes meet with four or five years' 

 growth ranged sideways and this is the invariable rule with all Lilies 

 malformatious excepted is it anything to call forth wonder, that in a 

 land so highly favoured as California, there should be found inserted in 

 one long, sideward-growing bulb (successional bulbs) the accumulated 

 (successional) growth of eight or ten years.* 



18. " There is sometimes more than one seed bud, which grows out of 

 the new bulb, altogether independent of the parent bulb, and this gives rise 

 to the phenomenon of what is properly called twin bulbs. As an illustra- 

 tion, I have a Speciosum bulb which I took up last October and cut in two, 

 It is now shrivelled up by exposure to the atmosphere, but still I can see 

 two finely formed twin bulbs, and behind, and entirely distinct from them, 

 is the decayed stump of last year's flower stem. These bulbs are equal in 

 size, and show each the rudiments of a new flower stem, and had the 

 parent bulb been left in the ground or replanted, these bulbs would doubt- 

 less have both flowered this year. If the parent bulb had been allowed to 

 remain in the ground, these twin bulbs would have been much larger 

 than they are now, and the remains of the parent bulb in the ordinary 

 course of nature, would have been dead and gone by this time. Then, 

 how can it be said with truth, that the bulb that has flowered, has ever 

 flowered before ? Or with what truth can it be said that the bulb that 

 has flowered one year, can ever flower again ? I have said, that if a bulb 

 that has flowered, be taken up late in the autumn and cut in two vertically, 

 it will be seen that it has within itself, three distinct generations ; to this 

 it may be important to add, that at no other time in the year do such 

 phenomena appear. If this, then, be steadily borne in mind, many points 

 which at present, appear to be wrapped in obscurity, may easily be 

 resolved. Hitherto, it has been the habit to call a bulb taken up in 

 October, the parent bulb, but this is not, physiologically speaking, strictly 

 correct. The parent bulb at that time is the new bulb, which is within the 

 old one, as the new bulb has just then given birth to a young one in the 

 form of a germ or seed-bud, while the old bulb itself is on the eve of 

 dissolution. The old bulb, so often called the parent bulb, has no immediate 

 connection with the young seed-bud ; the old bulb gave birth to the new 

 bulb, and it is this new bulb that has given birth to the young seed-bud, 

 which will grow up and flower the year after its own parent has bloomed. 

 There is no genus in which the position of the seed-bud varies so much as 



* It seems to me, here, that Dunedin contradicts himself. He has before, stated that 

 the -bulb after flowering disappears entirely, leaving a new bulb growing out from its 

 centre to take its place. He here speaks of the accumulated growth of eight to ten 

 years in California, and of four to five years' growth found in his own explorations, and 

 in the woodcut figure he shows the core of the previous year 1877 ; and speaks also 

 of those of 187t>, and 1875, thus, clearly acknowledging that the core in part, at least, 

 does not disappear every year. 



My own views in full on these points are given on page 203, 



