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the S. tenuifolia, Borr, which I hope may flower this year, and 

 shew their amount of variation if any.* I have other plants 

 also but a year younger, growing at Cresswell, raised from S. 

 pateus, Woburn; S. Doniana, Sen.; a monoecious willow, brought 

 from Eothbury, probably self-impregnated, and from some more. 

 There are many curious questions which such experiments would 

 help to determine. For example, how far natural hybrids (for 

 I have purposely selected those for experiment of which I pos- 

 sess only one sex) differ from their female parent (the name of 

 which ought always to be carefully attached to the seedlings), 

 whether the produce consists of males or of females, and in what 

 proportion ; whether, and under what circumstances, monoecious 

 seedlings may be raised, either from a dioecious parent, or from 

 one containing both male and female flowers. It would be in- 

 teresting if the male plant could be raised in cases where at 

 present no male is certainly known, as in S. acuminata, Sin., and 

 to ascertain how far it resembles or departs froni its known female 

 parent. Such enquiries (and others, doubtless, will suggest 

 themselves) could not fail to give valuable results. The experi- 

 ments might be extended to artificial hybridization, as has been 

 chiefly done abroad with the most persevering patience. But as 

 the main question relates to the existence of hybrids in nature, 

 it seems far more important, in the first instance at least, to en- 

 quire what is the amount of variation in seedlings naturally pro- 

 duced from known mother plants, the male, of course, being 

 either unknown or traced conjecturally by the departure of the 

 offspring from the characters of the mother plant and resemblance 

 to some male growing near. Of those who have studied this 

 question of hybrid willows no one seems to have done so more 

 thoroughly than a Silesian botanist, Herr Max "Wichura, now, I 

 believe, deceased. An interesting account of his experiments is 

 to be found in a paper translated from the German by the Rev. 

 M. J. Berkeley, and published in the Transactions of the Horti- 

 cultural Society of London. Perhaps I shall not weary my 

 hearers if I endeavour to give a short account of the results as 



* One of these I may mention has flowered this year, and proves to be a male tenuifolia- 

 of which I had no example before. 



