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JOTTENAL OP HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GAEDENEE. [ September 27, 1864. 



"We may then suppose that some fruits which it produced 

 each year proceeded from fecundations effected by the inter- 

 vention of insects. What follows will prove that this reason 

 cannot be advanced. 



" In April of this year I caused to he planted, in the same 

 border where the Bryony was found, a second female speci- 

 men, raised from seeds produced in November, 1854, and 

 which till then had remained potted. Doubtless on account 

 of its youth this plant did not develope much, but it was 

 covered with flowers, which, without exaggerating, I may 

 reckon at many thousands. All were females ; in some I 

 perceived not the slightest vestige of anthers, and yet, 

 remarkable to say, all, or almost all, produced fruit now 

 ripe, which gave to the withered branches of the plant the 

 appearance of long red bunches. I took a hundred of them 

 promiscuously, to examine their contents; of this number 

 there was a dozen containing no seeds at all, forty-five with 

 only one, twenty-nine two, eleven three ; there were only 

 two with four seeds, and one alone which contained five. 

 This result does not sensibly differ from that presented by 

 the plant which grew close to a male plant. 



" Yet while this second Bryony was literally covered with 

 fruit, the old plant, distant from it only a few yards, bore 

 neither more nor less fruit than it did in the preceding 

 years. "We cannot say, then, that in both fecundation may 

 have been effected by insects carrying pollen of the species, 

 since it is evident that they would have equally taken it 

 to both, and that both in consequence would have equally 

 borne fruit. Now, as I have just said, the difference in this 

 respect was enormous. I can only explain it to myself by 

 the particular individual dispositions ; in other terms, by 

 veritable idiosyncracies." 



At the base of the petals of the female flower of Bryonia 

 dioica may be seen a sort of globular gland surrounded by 

 hairs. This would seem to answer to the anther of the 

 male. It is very rarely if ever absent, and sometimes takes 

 a slight twist, like the normal anthers. It is a very minute 

 object generally. I have had some diffi culties in carrying 

 out my experiments on this plant, but may mention one 

 that is decisive. I gathered, several times, branches of the 

 female plant with the flowers in bud, and kept them in 

 water under a propagating-glass till they opened. "When 

 examined, one or two grains of pollen were found in nearly 

 every flower, probably produced by these gland-like bodies 

 to which they were attached. The ovaries of most of the 

 flowers became swoll&n, but eventually dropped off. One 

 peculiarity of the plant is, that the opposite sexes are gene- 

 rally found in groups, and the two sexes very rarely together. 

 I have once seen a male and female stem growing close 

 together, but could not ascertain whether or not they were 

 thrown out from the same rootstock, although I think it 

 probable; for, judging from the natures of other plants, 

 there is no reason to believe that the rootstock is male or 

 female, but that it is capable of throwing up either a male 

 or female stem at different times, as circumstances or the 

 nature of the plant may direct. I know this to be the case 

 in another instance. 



I may, however, say, that in various berries of the Bryony 

 I have planted in my own garden, all the seeds contained in 

 each separate berry produced plants of one sex, for a single 

 berry does not appear to contain seeds capable of producing 

 plants of both sexes the first year. This sufficiently accounts 

 for the groups of male or female plants usually seen in the 

 hedges.* Should a bird, for instance, drop a berry in any 

 locality, it would produce a group of males, or a group of 

 females, although I am inclined to think a male plant one 

 year may become a female plant another year. But in 

 Bryonia, contrary to my experience in other dioecious plants, 

 I have never found occasional male flowers on a female 

 plant, or occasional female flowers on a male plant. It is 

 common to find a female plant or a group of females (with 

 no male anywhere near), with all the seeds fertilised and 

 covered with ripe berries. In some female plants growing 

 in my neighbourhood, and removed a considerable distance 

 from all males, I have seen nearly every flower fertilised ; 

 and when the female flowers were examined, I found their 



* I think seeds themselves are probably not either male or female, but 

 that after-influences produce the sex ; as in animals Che sex is not developed 

 in the early embryo life of the creature, nor till the embryo has attained a 

 certain age. 



interiors profusely covered with pollen, evidently brought 

 from male plants by insects, as every one who has noticed 

 Bryonia must have observed what a profuse quantity of 

 pollen their anthers shed. 



I will now turn to Lychnis diurna, or dioica rubra. I am 

 not aware that the female form of this plant is said to be 

 able to fertilise itself, but to a superficial observer it might 

 well be supposed to do so. From my own experiments I 

 well know individual specimens of this plant to be some- 

 times entirely male, then monoecious, and eventually entirely 

 female. I have a plant in my garden, the rootstock of 

 which has produced all three since the early spring of this 

 year. "When first planted it threw up stems containing 

 male flowers only. This continued for a month, when 

 females began to appear ; but it is clear, that if all the 

 males had died off before the females were produced, nc- 

 seed could be brought into existence; on the contrary, 

 when all the males had died and dropped away, and females 

 only were on the plant, all the ovules were fertilised without 

 exception. How was this effected ? "Was parthenogenesis 

 at work here ? Not so ; the original males, long since dead, 

 caused the fertilisation. But how, if the males were dying 

 off when the females were only in bud ? By this simple 

 contrivance of Nature : — When the female flowers had at- 

 tained maturity, and were shedding their pollen, the female 

 buds appeared below, with their stigmas hanging out of the 

 buds, so that there was a very good chance of all the females 

 being fertilised, although only in bud. Nor was this all, 

 for I believe in this plant, as in nearly all others, insects 

 are designed to play their parts. At first sight, it is not 

 clear how insects could help this plant, but I will explain. 

 In the first place, the crimson colour of the petals of the 

 male flower must be attractive to insects. Suppose an 

 insect has got the pollen from the male on to his head, legs, 

 &c, and the crimson petals of the female have not yet ap- 

 peared, what is there to attract him in turn to the female ? 

 Simply this : whilst the male has got a calyx barely marked 

 with red lines, the calyx of, the female bud is much more 

 crimson and attractive ; so that, whilst an insect is attracted 

 by the crimson of the petals of the male, it is in turn at- 

 tracted by the crimson of the calyx of the female, and if the 

 insect alights at all he must go at once on to the stigmas, 

 and so Nature's object is effected. 



"When one observes in the vegetable kingdom the various 

 forms of plants, some dioecious, some partially so, some 

 hermaphrodite, and others seldom or only under peculiar 

 circumstances ripening their fruit, the question suggests 

 itself as to whether all plants are not gradually changing 

 from one state to another. I am borne out in this hypo- 

 thesis by Mr. Darwin, who remarks that Primula is probably 

 gradually becoming dioecious from the hermaphrodite con- 

 dition. Or, whilst one set of organs are being suppressed, 

 the complementary set are being more fully developed. I 

 believe this to be probable, and supported by many facts in 

 both the animal and vegetable kingdoms. If we take the 

 animal kingdom, we find a limited number of creatures un- 

 questionably hermaphrodite, but of a very low order ; but if" 

 we call all the creatures possessing separate sexes dioecious, 

 we then come at once to a much higher order of being. I 

 believe it is the same in the vegetable kingdom, for where 

 the sexes are separated there must be more difficulty in 

 breeding, the act of fertilisation depending upon external, 

 or, perhaps, accidental circumstances. The lower any object 

 is in the scale of nature, either animal or vegetable, the 

 more profusely it multiplies itself; whilst the higher, the 

 greater difficulty there is in breeding. Take horses, for 

 example. Every one knows the difficulty there is of in- 

 creasing the number of highly-trained animals. Even in 

 man, as a rule, the lowest and most debased races increase 

 most rapidly. The higher order of animals produce one at 

 a birth, the lower hundreds or thousands. The same applies 

 to vegetable life ; the lower the plants the more profuse the 

 breeding,. as in the Toadstool, with its millions of spores; 

 and in the opposite degree those flowering plants are the 

 highest that produce the least number of seeds, or that have 

 the greatest difficulty in propagating themselves. — (Journal 

 of Botany.) ___ 



Brighton Show.— We are glad to find that the gentle- 

 men of the north are well maintaining their reputation for 



