146 DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS 



body of the pistil) into the centre of the ovary, which has an 

 aperture so arranged as to let it in till it is full, when it 

 closes again so completely that the seminal juice is held 

 within till the time comes when the ovary is forced open by 

 the ripening seed. 



Before the flowers expand, and while they are still 

 enveloped like a wheat ear in leafy bandages, the ovary is 

 already furnished with eggs ; but the seminal juice has not 

 yet been deposited, the pistil not being formed enough to 

 open its cells, but even while the flower is still in bud, 

 the anthers let fall their pollen, and the pistil opens its cells, 

 and no one seems to know exactly when it happens that 

 the pollen explodes its little capsules of liquor or vapour or 

 breath, which form the seminal juice. 



Saint-Simon has a theory that the bees flying to and fro 

 constantly over the flowers disturb the pollen, often carrying 

 with them some of the pollen (containing seminal juice) from 

 one flower to another, where it is deposited and received 

 through the pistil into the ovary, and he suggests that this 

 is the cause why " Conquests " (i.e. hyacinths raised from 

 seed) never bear any resemblance to the flower their seed 

 is derived from. But this does not seem entirely to 

 account for their infinite variety. The invariability of 

 this rule (that no hyacinth has been known to produce its 

 like by seed) seems to prove that variation is not subject 

 entirely to accidents of this kind, for surely sometimes by 

 accident there would come up the same flower as that from 

 which the seed was taken. Some growers may have taken 

 seed from hyacinths grown in hothouses, where the flower 

 has been protected from bees and butterflies, and thus un- 

 disturbed the flower should have had seed which reproduced 

 its own kind — and why should this occur as an invariable 

 rule among hyacinths, when other flowers more frequently 

 reproduce their own kind than not, with them the varia- 



