164 ARTIFICIAL FERTILISATION 



In all the foregoing crosses I had, perhaps, less an eye to 

 accomplish a purely scientific experiment than to effect a bene- 

 ficial result ; for, after all, it is the quid sit utile which those for 

 whom this paper is mainly intended will have most in view ; 

 and, in my estimation, science is best promoted when she is 

 made to minister to some useful end. 



The following experiment among the species Clematis illus- 

 trates my view of sympathy as well as of antipathy, and, I would 

 add, of unnatural selection : Having many years ago (long 

 before the Messrs Jackman, who have accomplished such 

 wonderful results) been myself working on the members of this 

 genus, I thought of making another experiment on it, with a 

 view to infuse a richer colour into a new and larger-flowering 

 progeny; and, as I have observed already, I managed success- 

 fully to cross with pollen, kept for eleven months, the beautiful 

 four-petalled Clematis Jackmanni on a thirteen-petalled flower 

 of the fine C. Candida. But it is of a cross on Messrs Jack- 

 man's smaller but no less beautiful C. rubro-violacea I am 

 now to speak. Though, like its congener C. Jackmanni, it 

 sometimes comes with five or even six petals, it is in its gene- 

 ral type a four-petalled flower. With a view to improve it in 

 this feature, I crossed it also with pollen of the large-flowered 

 Clematis Candida, taken from a bloom having seventeen petals, 

 though this Clematis a French hybrid, I believe, from C. lanu- 

 ginosa is in its normal state a six or eight petalled flower. 

 Though I crossed two flowers, after careful emasculation, I 

 only gathered three seeds, but these all of unusually large 

 dimensions. After the cross had taken, I left the normal 

 blooms on the crossed plant to their fate ; and though visited 

 by insects innumerable, and though the native pollen was 

 abundant, not one native seed, or any except the three pro- 

 duced by the cross, were ever formed on the plant ; and the 

 singular thing was, that with its own native pollen, abortive on 

 itself, I successfully crossed the fine double white-flowered 

 Chinese C. Fortunei ; and a cross more prolific in the seeds it 

 yielded I have not seen in the tribe before. I know not the 

 parentage from whence this C. rubro-vielacea was derived, 

 though I believe it to be a mongrel with none of the Fortunei 

 blood in it; yet mark how kindly the latter took with it 

 another instance of remarkable sympathy. Although I have no 

 record of it, I think I failed to get C. rubro-violacea to recipro- 

 cate this cross. 



In all these instances of sympathy and antipathy, and es- 

 pecially in this section of the natural order Ranunculacea, there 

 is something apparently so inexplicable that I can only concur 



