HYBEIDISISG AND CUOSS-BEEEDING. 29 



HYBRIDISING AND CROSS-BREEDING. 



|HIS subject has become of such great importance, 

 and the results achieved by it during the last few 

 years have been so extraordinary, that it cannot 

 be passed over in silence in any work treating upon plant 

 culture, without causing a feeling of disappointment to 

 many into whose hands such a work may be expected to 

 fall. Although, therefore, it would be unseemly to enter 

 deeply into the subject, we propose to offer a few hints 

 and remarks, such as may be likely to prove useful to 

 the amatiBur plant grower, to whom this work is princi- 

 pally addressed. The terms hybridising and cross-breeding 

 are often, though erroneously, used as synonyms ; never- 

 theless, although there is a considerable difference between 

 the two, yet the principal object which the operator has 

 in view is the same, viz., the improvement of the flower as 

 to size, or form, or colour, or all these conjointly ; or the 

 improvement of the foliage ; or the production of a better 

 habit and constitution of the particular plants operated upon. 

 Hybridising, in the strict sense of the term, is the raising 

 a progeny between two distinct species, by applying the 

 pollen of one species to the stigma of the other. The plants 

 raised from these two species will, as a rule, be barren, and 

 incapable of again producing seed. Cross-breeding is the 

 raising of new forms, from the fertilisation of two varieties 

 of the same or of allied species, which wUl be fertile, and 

 again available for cross-breeding. To these two prcrcesses 

 we are indebted for many of the gayest ornaments of our 

 gardens and plant houses, as will be evident when we quote 

 such examples as Pelargoniums, Fuchsias, Roses, Dahlias, 

 and many other florist flowers, as well as Achimenes, 



