462 Remarhs and Observations suggested 



wood. The Hagenau Scotch fir is a slower grower than the High- 

 land, or common, Scotch fir, and is said to produce better 

 wood. 



In Hybridising and Crossbreeding, the methods employed by 

 Mr. Knight, Mr. Herbert, and others, are detailed and com- 

 mented upon : there seems much to learn yet on these subjects ; 

 and the observations fi-om experience, promised by Mr. Bea- 

 ton, should be valuable. The endeavours to blend the qualities 

 of precocity, size, flavour, &c., of one variety with another 

 deficient in these may, however, be productive of much benefit, 

 though'we cannot yet say which qualities are most affected by 

 the male parent, and which by the female ; we may also make 

 them earlier and hardier, and improve their fruit in size, by the 

 treatment we give to the plant or parts of a plant we save the 

 seed from ; but this belongs rather to the former section. On 

 the doubling of flowers noticed in this section, I have already 

 stated my opinions in the section Action of Flowers, it is the 

 method practised by the best growers of double stocks. Va- 

 rieties are more often got from accident than theory; but 

 theory may guide us in our efforts, as, however accidental any 

 production may appear, it must have a cause which theory may 

 enable us to imitate. Some accidental varieties, as variegated or 

 curled foliage, mossy branches or calyx, are not likely to come 

 from seed (though the copper-leaved beech has been got in that 

 way), and varieties of this kind must be propagated from the 

 individual plant ; the most curious instance of accidental va- 

 rieties is that lately noticed in this Magazine, of the purple 

 laburnum. The instance of the black eagle cherry, when first 

 raised by Mr. Knight, being thought useless at first, and after- 

 wards becoming rich, is an instance of the effect of soils and 

 situations, and perhaps stocks, on fruits, which is not easily 

 accounted for; in the same garden, and close to one another, 

 the same kind of fruit, though both are budded from the same 

 shoot, will be very superior on the one tree to what it will be 

 on the other; the black eagle cherry is said to have very inferior 

 fruit in some situations. 



In the Principles of Resting, there is a long detail of the 

 principal climates from which our exotic plants are drawn, and 

 their effects on vegetation. The effects of a very dry warm atmo- 

 sphere, as in forcing, in causing an inspissated or concentrated 

 state of the sap, thus producing flowers and fruits ; the advan- 

 tage that may be taken, by resting and forcing at different 

 periods, in altering the periods of producing fruit ; the necessity 

 of diurnal as v/ell as periodical repose ; the great difference in 

 tropical countries of the heat by day and the heat by night, 

 pointing out the necessity of nightly rest from excitement, and 

 the error of keeping up too great a degree of heat in our houses 



