OBSERVATIONS UPON MULING AMONG PLANTS. 



157 



zation in plants as a prize question. It remained some time 

 without any answer ; and it was not till 1828 that Wiegmann 

 published his treatise — meeting, however, only a portion of the 

 subject. A similar question was proposed, partly in consequence 

 of the confessedly imperfect state of information on the matter, 

 by the Dutch Academy in 1830; and after a like delay, our 

 author's treatise, of which the present is an immensely enlarged 

 edition, containing the additional experience of more than ten years, 

 appeared in 1837. Meanwhile other labourers have been in the 

 field, especially Mr. Knight and the late lamented Dean of Man- 

 chester, whose profound knowledge on the subject was the result 

 of at least as long experience as that of Gartner, though perhaps 

 till lately but little appreciated on the Continent : and besides 

 this, the practice of producing hybrids (in a more or less exact 

 sense) is become so general, and indeed indispensable, amongst 

 the raisers of new and rare forms of ornamental plants, for which 

 there is every day an increased demand, that there exists a con- 

 siderable stock of knowledge as to the laws which regulate their 

 production, and few points, whether normal or exceptional, can 

 have escaped the eye of the observer. The work before us, 

 therefore, cannot be expected to contain much novelty, but, 

 what is at present of great importance, it states in a simple, 

 unpretending way, though perhaps with a little unnecessary 

 repetition (a circumstance arising from the unhappy arrangement 

 of the contents), the several lights in which the subject may be 

 viewed, and that not in the way of theory, much less of the 

 so-called philosophical style so usual with the author's country- 

 men, but as the result of more than nine thousand distinct 

 experiments. 



The volume is indeed a perfect monument of patience and 

 industry. For, be it observed, the production of hybrids and 

 the study of the laws by which they are regulated is quite a 

 different matter, as was pointed out by our countryman, Mr. Her- 

 bert, from that of raising flowers or plants for show or general 

 utility. The latter is comparatively one of far easier manipula- 

 tion, and more encouraging from the splendid results to which it 

 leads, as well as the immediate profit attendant on it, and the 

 success far more certain, from the circumstance that varieties or 

 forms are the principal subjects of trial, which cross with one 

 another with the greatest ease, and yield an infinite variety of 

 new forms, of which some are sure to repay the necessary labour. 

 But the case is far otherwise with the investigation of true 

 hybrids. The manipulation alone, especially when extended to 

 plants of various genera, is often extremely difficult, the failures 

 innumerable, the results in general far from splendid, and in- 

 teresting chiefly as individual links in a complicated piece of 

 chain-work ; the labour immense and unceasing, and after all 



