ON AMAUYLLIDS. 



133 



of our best bulb growers with his arrangement, and these la- 

 mentations forced strongly upon the mind the different ideas of 

 utility entertained by botanists and mere gardeners. The 

 arrangement was certainly not very flattering to those who would 

 " let well alone," and yet it was so mysterious to the grumblers 

 that they feared to show their opposition to it in public print. 

 How I came to know how the tide ran was by mere chance. 

 Mr. Loudon sent an early copy of the Amaryllidaceae to me 

 in the end of April, 1837, with a request that I would write a 

 notice of it for the Gardener's Magazine, to be in time with it 

 for the next June Number, which I did, and for which I was 

 thought a fair target for the shafts of the grumblers, having 

 spoken favourably of the work. I thus became aware of how 

 far honest men differed from the author and from each other on 

 the arrangement of Amaryllids. I was asked over and over 

 again what difference could be found between a Hippeastrum 

 and an Amaryllis, or between a Pancratium and a Hvmenocallis, 

 and what affinity there could be between a Vallota and a Cyrtan- 

 thus to warrant their alliance so closely in this new arrangement. 

 Looking at Vallota and Cyrtantlius with a gardener's eye, it 

 does seem strange that plants so dissimilar in their outward 

 forms should still be related botanically — the Vallota being to 

 all appearance a true Amaryllis, while the Cyrtanthus looks as 

 if it rather belonged to the section in which Clivia and Coburgia 

 are found — Phaedranassa was not then established. But the Dean, 

 who had a wonderful insight into the true affinity of bulbs, thought 

 otherwise, and instead of following those who took a gardening 

 view of the subject, or of drawing a mistaken comparison between 

 Clivia, alias Imatophyllum, and Cyrtanthus, to which Clivia has 

 no true affinity, divided them into hollow and solid-scaped sections, 

 and he afterwards asserted from his own experience that a plant 

 from either section could no more cross with any plant in the 

 other section than it could with an Oak tree ; and thus in his 

 arrangement Vallota is placed side by side with Cyrtanthus on 

 account of their flowers being borne on a pipy stalk or hollow 

 scape, while the Cyrtanthus-like flowers of Coburgia and Clivia 

 availed nothing in his eyes, as these flowers are produced on 

 solid stalks, and he placed a host of other plants between them in 

 the two sections thus distinguished. Nevertheless in his inter- 

 course with gardeners he wished them not to give up any point 

 on which they might differ from him in this arrangement until 

 they proved it by repeated experiments with the pollen, and for 

 the last ten years of his life he allowed a great latitude of 

 correspondence to the writer of t his article with respect to such 

 experiments, and was always willing to suggest the most likely 

 mode of conducting them. 



