ON HYBRIDIZATION AMONGST VEGETABLES. 



•27 



shaped flower with a tube, and an abortive attempt to produce 

 the rudiment of a cup. The order contains Narcissi with the 

 filaments included within a cup ; the Pancratiform plants, in 

 which they are connected by the cup ; the Amarylliform, in 

 which there is no cup, but often an irregular manifestation of the 

 membrane that forms it in the shape of ring, screen, or beard, 

 or even supernumerary anthers ; and the Caulescent plants, such 

 as Alstrcemeria. I wish to illustrate the possibility, and even 

 probability, of their being all branched from one created type, 

 however dissimilar at the remotest extremities of the order. 

 First, then, I consider N. deficiens to be the nearest existing 

 plant to the first Narcissus ; and turning to the Pancratiform 

 plants, I find Cavanilles's Pancratium humile ( Tapeinanthus, 

 Herbert corrected to Tapeincegle, the former name having been 

 preoccupied, but perhaps referable to genus Lapiedra), in size, 

 bulb, foliage, stalk, and flower nearly similar to N. deficiens, 

 excepting the yellow colour of its limb, and its sometimes bear- 

 ing two flowers on the stalk, like N. obsoletus. Its cup is so de- 

 ficient, that in the one dry specimen I have seen I could not per- 

 ceive it without a lens, and it was merely a minute exhibition of 

 a thread of connecting membrane. The most conspicuous dif- 

 ference is the prolongation of the filaments, and the want of a 

 tube. Cavanilles's plate is very inaccurate. The specimen had 

 a one-flowered scape five inches long, peduncle above one-fourth, 

 spathe eleven-sixteenths of an inch, geraien short, subordinate, 

 perianth seven-sixteenths long, segments about one-tenth wide, 

 cup scarcely anything but a manifestation of the membrane 

 visible with a magnifier. Here then we have what we may 

 suppose to be nearly the form of the first attempt to produce the 

 Pancratiform plant. The abbreviation of the tube from many 

 inches to a fraction occurs in the genus Hippeastrum. But I have 

 another autumnal flower at this moment just appearing, Carpolvza 

 spiralis, of the Amary Hid i form section ; and in what does it differ 

 from N. deficiens? Bulb, leaf (except its not being erect), 

 scape, spathe, season, size, and shape of the flower similar, and 

 the colour nearly so ; bearing sometimes three flowers ; but it 

 has the fleshy seeds of its division, and it has no manifestation of 

 the membrane. Here then we have what we may take as nearly 

 the first type of Amaryllis, Crinuni, and the whole division to 

 which they belong. Approach these three, and compare them ; 

 and, however widely they have departed from each other at the 

 extremities of each division, who will venture to say that they 

 could not have proceeded from one type ? — or that Carpolyza 

 without the membrane may not be the very root and foundation 

 of the order ? Is the breadth of a hair in the position of a 

 thread of membrane, either between or behind the filaments, or 



