AND CROSS-BREEDING. l6l 



slightest tendency that way, though ten and twelve years I 

 would consider about the mean at which they attain their 

 flowering condition. If by such crosses the like precocity can 

 be generally secured, practical florists may turn them to some 

 account in their profession. You will please observe that I am 

 now dealing with hard-wooded shrubs, where there is in general 

 more fixedness of structure and habit than in those on which 

 the physiologists I have cited have chiefly experimented, and 

 which are less liable to be modified by the manifold influences 

 which affect the more pliant and shorter-lived herbaceous genera. 

 2d. The next cross in the Rhododendron tribe effected by 

 the short stamens to which I would direct attention is very 

 recent, and one with which I took the utmost pains to prevent 

 miscarriage. The beautiful R. jasminiflorum of Java, with its 

 delicious perfume and its long tubular five-lobed flowers, of 

 snowy whiteness, so like Erica Aitonii so like, too, in form 

 and fragrance, the sweet-scented Jasmine and so unlike all its 

 own congeners, is the subject of it ; and as I regard this cross 

 as of some scientific as well as of some practical value, I shall 

 offer no apology for giving you particulars. I made it the sub- 

 ject of many attempted crosses by many of its own tribe all 

 of which failed except two, which, by the way, afford a good 

 illustration of what I alluded to in my former paper of the 

 sympathies of plants, and perhaps, too, of natural selection, 

 though whether it be in the mode which Darwin regards as 

 leading to diversity of species I cannot positively assert, yet I 

 think it is worthy of his consideration. While it rejected so 

 many of its legitimate brethren of the Rhododendron tribe pure 

 and simple, I was somewhat surprised that it took kindly with 

 my hybrid B already noticed i.e., Jt. ciliatum crossed by R. 

 Edgeworthii a hybrid of the first degree, having large flowers 

 of three inches diameter, perfumed, and also of snowy white- 

 ness. After the bloom had been long emasculated, on April 

 1 7th, 1867, I effected the cross with the short anthers of the 

 hybrid B. The cross took admirably the seed-pod swelled, 

 and was pulled fully ripe about i2th July last. On the i5th 

 of that month I sowed the seeds. For the purpose of com- 

 parison, I sowed a pod of its own plain native seeds which I 

 had gathered previously, and had, in fact, sown it some ten or 

 twelve days before I sowed the cross. These are both now up. 

 While the native seeds have produced a fair show of feeble 

 plants, the crossed seeds have come up in more than double 

 the number of plants, doubly vigorous in growth and habit, and 

 with leaves so much larger than those of the normal form as to 

 remove all doubt about the verity of the cross. 



L 



