BUT MAT BE PEODUCED ARTIFICIALLY. 503 



bar to its beauty when made double, how much greater an 

 obstacle to it muist be the natural production of unsym- 

 metrical flowers. This occurs in the Snapdragon, which, 

 with a five-lobed corolla, has but four stamens ; and the 

 consequence is, that, when it becomes double, the flower is a 

 confused crowd of crumpled petals issuing from the original 

 corolla. 



Attempts have been made to produce double flowers by 

 artificial processes, but I never heard of the smallest success 

 attending such cases, unless the tendency to their production 

 had already manifested itself naturally ; as in the Stock, which 

 will frequently become single from having been double, in 

 which case its original double character may be recovered. A 

 mode of effecting this has been described by Mr. James Munro. 

 {Gard. Mag., xiv. 121.) Having a number of Single Scarlet 

 Ten- week Stocks, he deprived them of all their flowers as soon 

 as he found that five or six seed-vessels were formed upon each 

 spike, by which means he compelled all the nutritive matter 

 that would have been expended upon the whole flower-spike 

 and its numerous seed-vessels to be concentrated in the small 

 number which he left ; and the result, he says, was, that from 

 the seed thus saved he had more than 400 Double Stocks in 

 one small bed. 



Gsertner asserts that in the production of double blossoms, 

 it is a matter of indifl'erence whether the pollen be taken from 

 a double or single variety, provided the flower of the mother is 

 double. 



There can be little doubt that, if any original change to a 

 double flower can be effected by art, it will be more likely to 

 occur with respect to those species which have an indefinite 

 number of stamens, where the tendency to this monstrosity 

 already exists. It is not many years since the Chryseis 

 (Eschscholtzia) caJifornica, a polyandrous plant, was introduced 

 to our gardens : and I, at one time, made some attempts to 

 render it double, conceiving it a good subject for experiment 

 on that account, but I had no success ; it, however, accidentally 

 became semi-double in Mrs. Marryat's garden, at Wimbledon ; 

 and we stiU see semi-double plants in our gardens. 



