ON HYBRIDIZATION AMONGST VEGETABLES. 105 



accurate discrimination of individual specimens, and great in- 

 dustry in searching them out, his mind had not capacity even 

 to combine the seminal variations of particular species, and he 

 found the high-road on which he was travelling broken up by 

 a troop of unexpected invaders. I mentioned long ago that I 

 .had raised at Mitcham primrose, cowslip, oxlip, and dark poly- 

 anthus, from the seed of one plant highly manured without any 

 hybridization. 



Concerning Petunia, and the genera allied to it, I have nothing 

 to add to the observations in my treatise on hybrid intermixtures, 

 Amaryl. p. 377-9, to which I beg to refer the reader. I have 

 no reason to alter any of the views expressed in those pages, 

 but I do not recollect that I pushed the experiments relating to 

 them any further. 



In a treatise on this subject I must not forget Plant's vegetable 

 monster, of which I gave the particulars, with an engraving, at 

 the commencement of the miscellaneous matter in the ' Botanical 

 Register' of 1843. The sketches were made by myself with 

 the most careful accuracy, from the three plants which were 

 sent to me by Mr. Plant, in a dormant state, from which they 

 never awoke. They were, in fact, seemingly past hope, or 

 nearly so, when I received them, and began to turn mouldy as 

 soon as they were watered. I believe he lost at the same time 

 the fourth, which he kept for himself. Whoever will examine 

 the engraving, and read the particulars detailed there, can form 

 as just an opinion as I can, whether he really had obtained four 

 anomalous monsters from Gladiolus blandus, impregnated by an 

 Hippeastrum, or whether they were something else which he 

 had confounded with his supposed mule seedlings. They were 

 like no vegetable known to me, and their strange form has 

 certainly the appearance of fluctuation between the structure of 

 a dry-coated annual corm, and a fleshy tunicated bulb. Even 

 Mr. Plant thought they would prove incapable of flowering. 

 Their leaves, which I did not see, were stated to have been more 

 glossy than those of a Gladiolus ; and they scarcely appear to 

 have been capable of a protracted existence, unless under the 

 most unremitting care. He stated that they had suffered from 

 neglect while he was ill. I am inclined to believe that they 

 were biordinate and semiabortive mules ; for I cannot absolutely 

 repudiate the possibility of monstrous impregnations, though I 

 believe the produce to be doomed to a very brief existence, if 

 ever brought to life. 



P.S. — It appears from a communication lately received that I 

 have not made myself clearly understood in the first article re- 

 specting the diversified features that have become fixed characters 



