276 CHANGES WHICH TAKE PLACE IN PLANTS 



of the cabbage tribe. Some sprouting broccoli, growing 

 under a netted enclosure, flowered and ripened their seeds 

 well. Some of these seeds were sown, never dreaming of 

 any crossing or hybridizing. The produce, however, opened 

 my eyes. A regiment of plants of a coarse kale constituted 

 the produce, which failed to give the fine succulent growths 

 we were accustomed to gather from the sprouting broccoli. 

 Some coarse cabbage had flowered in the neighbourhood of 

 the sprouting broccoli. Pollen carried by bees or moths 

 had fertilized the blooms, and completely altered the type 

 of the plant. Selection must always be taken of our 

 most robust plants as seed-bearers, and by that means a 

 strain becomes established, which can with great care be 

 maintained. 



Many of our wild plants in nature are hybrids. That 

 crossing varieties does not always give seed bearing forms 

 is well known. Indeed, the capriciousness of flowers in this 

 respect is unaccountable. For instance, the flowers of a 

 variety may refuse to respond to the pollen of another of 

 the same family ; while the pollen-bearer may reciprocate 

 from the other side. In the Rhododendron family, this 

 has often been proved by hybridists. I have experienced 

 the same difficulty. Species and sub-species are nature's 

 work, and their existence it is very difficult to give an 

 account of. 



I give an example from personal experience. About ten 

 years ago, when at Killin with the Scottish Alpine Botanical 

 Club, we made our excursion to Lochan Laragan, a 

 wild tarn situated on the watershed between Killin and 

 Glen Lyon, on the old hill road to that region. The 

 precipices all round the loch have a north-east exposure, 

 and very moist, and are covered with alpines and ferns, 

 Woodsia Alpina among the number. Having gathered all I 

 could get, by the course of a very steep mountain torrent 

 which had made a way for the water to get to the loch, 

 I, after a laborious ascent, reached the plateau with the 

 rocks of Meal nan Tarmachan towering above. Several 

 members of the Club ascended these rocky precipices to 

 the summit, without getting much. The minister of Killin, 

 the Inland Eevenue Officer, two gentlemen who had got 



