310 APPLICATION OF PRINCIPLES. 



There are no processes known to the cultivator so 

 efficacious in producing new varieties as that adverted 

 to in the last paragraph, that is to say, muling or cross 

 breeding (88) ; and it is to these operations, more than 

 to any thing else, that we owe the beauty and excel- 

 lence of most of our garden productions ; more, how- 

 ever, I think, to cross breeding than to muling. It 

 was entirely by the first of these processes that have 

 been so greatly multiplied and improved our fruits 

 for the dessert, and the gay flowers that adorn our 

 gardens. The Pelargonium, the Calceolaria, the 

 Dahlia, the Verbena, and a thousand others — what 

 would they be but simple wild flowers, without the 

 power of man exercised in this way ? "To the cul- 

 tivators of ornamental plants," says Mr. Herbert,* 

 "the facility of raising hybrid varieties affords an 

 endless source of interest and amusement. He sees 

 in the several species of. each genus that he possesses 

 the materials with which he must work, and he con- 

 siders in what manner he can blend them to the best 

 advantage, looking to the several gifts in which each 

 excels, whether of hardiness to endure our seasons, 

 of brilliancy in its colours, of delicacy in its mark- 

 ings, of fragrance, or stature, or profusion of blossom ; 

 and he may anticipate, with tolerable accuracy, the 

 probable aspect of the intermediate plant which he is 

 permitted to create ; for that term may be figurative- 



* See much the most valuable and practical account of cross 

 breeding and muling which has been yet published in regard to 

 horticulture, in the Amaryllidacem of the Hon. and Rev. W. 

 Herbertj p. 8S5, et seq. 



