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JOURNAL OP HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



[February 3, 1863. 



promoting the science and art, it would never be self-supporting 

 — that itB patrons w ould never be off the road begging for its 

 maintenance, and, consequently, deatb would be the end of it. 

 Time will only solve that problem in a satisfactory manner ; but 

 if such a rural spot as Bishop Auckland, with an active manag- 

 ing body can get up a horticultural show, which, we believe, is 

 now second to none in the kingdom, that will induce, as was 

 the case last Beaeon, upwards of 20,000 people to come and see 

 it, what will those great commercial cities which we have 

 named not do if called upon ? 



Let us quote one other example of a mighty kindred gathering. 

 When the Agricultural Society of England held its Show at 

 Leeds little more than twelve months ago, no less than 70,000 

 people went through the turnstiles in one day to see that Exhi- 

 bition. And may we not argue that a Horticultural Society 

 properly organised, which should command all the influence of 

 the horticulture-loving community of England, would achieve 

 an amount of success proportionately great, and that such a 

 project most emphatically warrants, nay, even demands, the 

 earnest consideration more especially of those who have elected 

 gardening as their profession ? 



There is plenty of room for the inauguration of such a 

 Society without disturbing the harmony and efficiency of any 

 that is already in existence, and it would go far, as has been 

 already hinted, to draw out those who have held aloof because 

 they have either distanced all competitors who have entered the 

 arena with them, or else they have considered the stake at issue 

 unworthy of their notice, and the honour to be gained only of a 

 local, and, therefore, of a limited kind. The press by this means 

 would be enabled to bring before the notice of their readers a 

 much greater variety of subjects. The number of prizetakers, 

 too, would be much more diverse, and the value and honour of 

 the prizes much more enhanced. It would incite a community 

 of interests unknown even in metropolitan showing, and would 

 have a tendency to draw closer the bonds of brotherhood. I 

 have merely initiated the idea, and hope to hear your own and 

 your readers' views thereupon. — Jas. Ajjdeeson. 



[Our friends well know that we have long entertained the 

 opinion that there is open to the Royal Horticultural Society 

 that field of usefulness hitherto unoccupied, and now pointed 

 out by Mr. Anderson — holding an annual meeting in some 

 country district of England, similar in character to that held 

 yearly by the Royal Agricultural Society. 



If such a meeting were held at the season of the year when 

 the gentry of England return to the provinces, and at places so 

 distant from London as to allow gardeners to compete who have 

 hitherto been precluded from exhibiting in London, the Society 

 would confer a great boon ; and at the same time a stimulus 

 would be applied to the gardening of remote districts, not only 

 by the intercourse thus secured, but by exhibiting produce which 

 the amateurs in those districts had scarcely deemed attainable. 



We do not attempt to propose a plan by which the idea conld 

 be brought into operation ; but a Committee would soon make 

 the necessary arrangements, and local subscriptions to sustain 

 the project, would, we think, flow in plentifully. — Eds. J. op H.] 



CKOSS-BKEEDLNG G-EEANIUlfS. 



I 'WEOTE the answer to Mr. Darwin so hurriedly, that I made 

 a mistake or two, which might lead readers into greater errors. 

 Thus, " I had a commission to work over, again and again, every 

 experiment [for changing the colour of Peas] mentioned by 

 Gartner and Weigmann," and the absurd assertion of "Sageret," 

 about crossing between the Cabbage and Horseradish. 



I did not try over again all the experiments they put on 

 record ; at least, not under that commission. That was as far 

 baok as 1833, 1834, and 1835, and the conclusion was, that 

 Dr. Weigmann was not even aware that the garden Pea could 

 not be crossed by any other Pea or plant whatever, without ar- 

 tificial means, and very likely there is no want of such opinions 

 at the present day. 



Prom thirty to forty trials in each of those years, Gartner's 

 assertion that he changed the colour of a Pea by pollen was 

 proved to be wrong, and yet he very probably had a different- 

 coloured Pea in the mother pod as he says ; and if so, that was 

 caused by a natural sport, more than one-half, if not every one, 

 of our prtsent race of Peas being natural sports induced by cul- 

 tivation probably. But, in some cases, the change would appear 

 to be induced by some chemical constituent of the soil in which 



the plants are grown, for I know a soil which will change the 

 bean of the Scarlet Runner to a jet black three times out of five 

 sowings, and, no doubt, many gardeners have noticed the same 

 effect in this and in other seedlings of their own rearing. 



Again, when I said Pelargonium "is not a natural genus," I 

 meant not botanically, but for the purposes of the hybridiser, in 

 its strict meaning — that is to say, that all the species of Pelar- 

 gonium could not cross together without destroying Erodium, 

 because there is a section of Pelargoniums in which the species 

 are affected in the peduncle by the pollen, exactly as the species 

 of Erodium, and the species of Erodium are as differently 

 affected in the peduncle from those of Pelargonium as the 

 affection itself is different from the more usual course of nature. 

 In the " usual course" impregnation would seem to be only one 

 single process, which it certainly is not in many plants. 



To explain the affection to people who know little of such 

 subjects, let me say that a truss of such flowers is like the foot 

 of a Game cock j the claws are the peduncles, or stalks, which 

 support the individual flowers in a head, trass, or bunch of 

 flowers. When the pollen affects one of such claws, that claw is, 

 as it were, paralysed, and is drawn-in under the foot of the bird, 

 the nail on the claw being the flower, but it is then the seed part. 

 Now, if the effect of the pollen reached the young seed, or ovum, 

 and put life into it, the claw would, in time, be restored very 

 gradually from the seeming paralysis to its natural position, 

 which position would be gained just as the seed was fit to bow, 

 but not juBt quite ripe for harvest. It is a very pretty pheno- 

 menon ; but being as common to gardeners as covering cold pits, 

 few of them care aught about it. 



That way of drawing-iu the claws under the foot one after 

 the other as soon as each is affected by the pollen is peculiar to 

 about two-thirds of the species of Pelargonium only. The 

 other third of the species are differently affected, and in the 

 same way as all the Erodiums are. With these, the Erodiums, 

 the joint of the leg above the claws, or what you might call the 

 ankle, would seem to be out of joint, and to pull up the claws, 

 one at a time, straight up against the leg; and by the time 

 the seed would be ripe each claw slackens from the rigid 

 strain, and finally turns up to take the original spread-out 

 form as the seeds become ripe. But without the pollen, the 

 claws or peduncles would never change out of the original and 

 natural direction. 



Now, would it not seem the oddest of the doings of Nature to 

 undo the joint of the footstalk of a flower as the first result from 

 the effect of the pollen, if that effect merely passed through the 

 style to the seed in a long tube, as it is said to do ? But when 

 you have five hundred wild species, and a multitude of seedling 

 flowers, which go directly to prove the footstalk out of joint, or 

 affected by pollen, although the seeds of none of that vast 

 number of plants had been touched, or affected at all, the mind 

 of man could hardly conceive a greater error in natural history 

 than the way they say the pollen reaches the seed ; and yet nine- 

 tentbs, if not all, the learned professors of botany of this gene- 

 ration believe that way firmly. 



Lastly, when I said I obtained a real cross from " Scarlet 

 Defiance, which is over fifteen years old ; but I may be mistaken," 

 I ought to have said that I believed Defiance was fifteen years 

 old, though I might be mistaken about its age, not mistaken as 

 to the cross, as the sentence might be taken to imply. 



I would ask, in return, Has any gardener obtained a real 

 cross from this Defiance during the last fifteen years, and if 

 bo, what is the name of the seedling, and who let it out ? It 

 may be of some use to cross-breeders to know the reason why 

 I ask this. 



It took me eight years to obtain that cross, and yet they say 

 I ought to know all about such ways. Some years I touched 

 over a hundred of its flowers without a fertile result, and yet 

 I was quite sure the pollen took a certain degree of effect ; for 

 the footstalk of a great number of the flowers touched relapsed 

 to the perpendicular downward position, but some did not, 

 because the pollen I made use of was foreign to the kind. 



If a plant is absolutely barren the footstalk cannot be thus 

 affected ; and when we Bay a plant is barren because we cannot 

 force a seedling from it, we may be saying what is not the fact. 

 Of one thing, I think, we may be sure in a seedling of Gera- 

 niacese, if the peduncle yields to the effect of pollen — namely, 

 that that Beedling is not naturally barren, though we may fail 

 to force it to seed. And that is what I wish that cross-breeders 

 should bear in mind, and therefore endeavour by a change of 

 treatment — such as a "warmer or a colder climate, a different 



