450 ON THE IMPROVEMENT OF PLANTS. 



point mainly the more perfect development of the organs 

 of reproduction, especially the polleniferous parts of 

 fructification. 



Thus fortified I selected some 20 sorts of Roses, 

 planted them in a separate corner of the nursery, and 

 in the month of June 1846 crossed nearly a thousand 

 flowers. Success in seeding was complete. On the 3Oth 

 of September of that year I gathered 223 well ripened 

 pods of seeds, some of them of extraordinary size. Two 

 successive gatherings of about 100 pods each, were after- 

 wards made at intervals of about a month, the whole 

 number of hybridised and crossed pods gathered and 

 stored amounting to 444. The seed was sown the same 

 winter, vegetated during the succeeding spring and 

 summer, and the seedlings bloomed at intervals over the 

 next six years that is to say, some bloomed the first 

 year, others were six years old before blooming. The 

 result of the hybridising and cross-breeding was apparent 

 in many cases but not in all. Two of the most striking 

 and complete I will describe. 



I had long thought that a bright dark coloured climbing 

 Rose was a desideratum, as at that time nearly all our 

 climbing Roses were white or yellow. To obtain this I 

 hybridised the Rose Athelin (hybrid Bourbon) with 

 Russelliana (multiflora). Paul's Vivid, a bright crimson 

 climbing Rose, of great repute in its day, and even now 

 sought after, was raised from this effort. Again, I had 

 conceived that if anything could add to the beauty of the 

 Moss Ross, it would be to impart to it the exquisite tint of 

 the R. alba or Maiden's Blush. To obtain this I hybridised 

 the Moss du Luxembourg with an alba Rose, and among 

 the offspring was a Moss Rose with flowers like the 

 Maiden's Blush, afterwards named " Princess Alice." 



A few years later I raised from one and the same 

 sowing of English Rose seed, the Roses Beauty of 

 Waltham, Lord Clyde, Red Rover, Globosa, Princess of 

 Wales, Dr Lindley, and Duke of Edinburgh. Unfortun- 



