Transactions of the Horticultural Society. 1 95 



we will venture to say, no man, however acute his botanical 

 acumen, could make out any one sort without the aid of the 

 coloured plates, and most beautiful plates they are, which 

 accompany them. We do not mean it to be inferred, that 

 Mr. Sabine's descriptions should not have been given, but 

 only to excuse ourselves from the useless labour of making 

 short that which the author has laboured to make long. 



What Mr. Sabine intends by Indian chrysanthemums are 

 two sorts, the parent of which he considers specifically distinct 

 from the parent of the Chinese chrysanthemums of the gardens. 

 In two papers in the Linneean Transactions (Vol. xiii. p. 561. 

 and xiv. p. 142.), Mr. S. endeavours to establish two species 

 as the types or parents of all the garden varieties. C. sinense 

 as the type of the greater number of sorts now in culture, 

 and C. indicum as the type of a double yellow, double white, 

 and single yellow chrysanthemum, described in the present 

 paper, and not yet in very common culture. It is not easy 

 for an ordinary observer to discover the varieties of C. sinense 

 from C. indicum ; but the former, with only one or two ex- 

 ceptions, are said to " smell like chamomile," while the latter 

 have an odour, " slightly pungent, and somewhat aromatic." 

 Two of the varieties described, the pale pink and cluster 

 pink, are recorded as the result of sporting, and the following 

 directions are given for the establishment of permanent va- 

 rieties from this source. 



" On the appearance of a sporting branch, part of it should be taken 

 off for propagation in the season of its appearance, because it is not certain, 

 though probable, that a sporting shoot will be produced by the old plant 

 in the next year, and as the branches are only annual, the increase of the 

 sport by cuttings must not be deferred to the spring. The sport never 

 deviates from the shape and character of the leaves, nor from the habit of 

 the parent plant ; the flowers alone are altered, and this is done either by 

 change of colour, or by conversion of quilled into expanded, or of expanded 

 into quilled florets. 



" The sporting plants already noticed, are, 1st. The purple, which pro- 

 duced the changeable white in England. 2d. The expanded light purple, 

 and the quilled light purple, which having been imported from China 

 separately, it cannot be ascertained here which was the original. 3d. The 

 curled lilac, from which the curled pink has lately been obtained in our 

 gardens ; and 4. The buff or orange, which sported in China to the rose 

 or pink : these two kinds were separately imported. 



" To some persons, the having plants producing sporting branches may 

 be a matter of amusement ; for this purpose sporting plants should be 

 procured, and as such they are best kept against a south wall ; but it must 

 be recollected, that the reproduction of sporting branches by any particular 

 plant is not to be depended on. 



" Those who wish to exhibit different flowers in the same pot, may 

 obtain their object in an easier manner than by procuring the sporting 

 plants. Cuttings, or small plants, of the different kinds derived from the 



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