HORTICULTURAL JOURNAL. 59 



m our pages if we can help it; and we doubt if lie can obtain admission for 

 his articles to any other horticultural paper. 



In answer to what Mr, Longworth has to urge, we think that we have said 

 before that the size of the crop is increased by planting staminates among 

 the pistillates; this is admitted on all hands. But that it is impossible for 

 pistillates to have some of their flowers hermaphrodite, has been contradicted 

 by the facts mentioned above, and moreover is contrary to the known laws 

 of nature. We all know that perfect fruit, that is the seed, cannot be pro- 

 duced in any plant without the fertilizing influence of pollen ; but will any 

 one persist in saying that pollen is necessary to cause the swelling of the 

 flower stalks of the strawberry which forms what we generally call the fruit?* 

 We are not such Hitlerites as to believe yet that the time of our opinions has 

 come, for we have not yet seen anything to make us retract anything we 

 have advanced. It is unfortunate, certainly, for any one to be obliged to 

 change his opinion on any subject, but one cannot always be right; (and it is 

 therefore best to be ready to take a different tack when the wind of know- 

 ledge shifts to a different quarter;) and to those who find themselves wrong, 

 we recommend the advice of Emerson — "A foolish consistency is the hob- 

 goblin of little minds; if you have ought to say, speak what to-day thinks in 

 words as cannon balls, and to-morrow speak what the morrow thinks, in hard 

 words again, even if it contradicts what had been said before." "Consis- 

 tency is a jewel," is a musty proverb, which most persons quote when asked 

 to acknowledge themselves in error. 



Mr. Elder evidently did not find much about the development of the parts 

 in those worthies of the earlier days of science, Smith and Lee, whom he has 

 studied to such advantage. It is always a bad sign when a person considers 

 his education completed. We see a great many persons in the world who do 

 not know enough to know how much there is to know. Patrick Henry was 

 certainly a very good natural orator, but I don't think that he has increased 

 his fame much by making such a speech as that. The monstrosity of the pe- 

 tal taking the place of the stigma in the Fuchsia has nothing to do with the 

 change of sex, but is only an incompleteness of development from the leaf to 

 the stigma. Any one who has read anything later than the works of Smith 

 and Lee, knows that the sepal, petals, stamens and pistils are only modifica- 

 tions of the leaf; and in the case of the fuchsia mentioned, the change only 

 got as far a3 the petal. 



^ hat Mr. Huntsman has to say, is all very true as to the crops ; but no- 

 thing more can be said about pistillates not setting fruit, for it has been tried 



* Schleiden. Poetry of the Vegetable World; translated by Arthur Henfrey : American edi- 

 tion, edited by Alphonso Wood, M.D., Cin. O. Moore, Anderson & Co., Cm. O. 



