190 Report on Botany. 



* 



time when his fruit trees were in full blossom, gloomily 

 but prophetically said that fruit would be a failure that 

 season, for the rain had drowned out the flowers. It is at 

 least questionable, whether he would not have been more 

 nearly correct if he had said that the rain has prevented 

 the bees from carrying the pollen from flower to flower 

 and therefore through lack of proper fertilization fruit will 

 be scarce. A cabbage planter purchased and planted seed 

 of a variety known as Bristol cabbage. The seed sprung 

 up but the crop was Bristol cabbage in part only, much of 

 it being some variety of a less market value. The planter' 

 claimed damages of the vender of the seed and instituted 

 an action in the courts to recover the amount lost by reason 

 of the failure of the seed to produce the expected variety. 



The defendant of course claimed that the seed was raised 

 from Bristol cabbage, and therefore was sold as such seed, 

 but that no warranty was given that it would produce 

 Bristol cabbage, since no man was able to tell how far the 

 purity of the seed might have been tainted by the cross- 

 fertilization of the flowers by pollen from other varieties 

 grown in the vicinity. These examples will suffice to 

 indicate the importance of the investigations botanists are 

 making in this direction. 



We would now beg your indulgence while we speak of 

 the progress of our own work, in which we may be supposed 

 to have a special interest, and of which we have a more 

 positive and personal knowledge. 



The whole number of species that, through discovery, 

 have been added to the flora of this State by ourselves and 

 ' correspondents, the past year, is two hundred and fifty- 

 five. Of these about one hundred are new or hitherto 

 undescribed species, there being one new flowering plant, 

 three new mosses and more than ninety new fungi. The 

 new flowering plant is so peculiar and so rare that it de- 

 serves more than a passing remark. It belongs to the genus 



