EXTRACTS FROM PROCEEDINGS. 



Ixi 



of the female. Moreover, the male parent has frequently been 

 assumed, and this on very questionable or even erroneous 

 grounds, as, for example, that we can determine the father and 

 mother from the form of the offspring, the one or the other having 

 a preponderating influence. The Congress at Paris was, not 

 without reason, disgusted at such diversity of usage and rash as- 

 sertions. It first established the fact that the majority of authors 

 (whether right or wrong) put the name of the father first, and 

 has in consequence proposed to follow this practice. At the same 

 time it found such inconvenience attendant on these double 

 names, imposed frequently by chance, that, in order to give some 

 check to the practice, it adopted the system only when the origin 

 was lenotvn hy actual experience (Art. 37) ; that is to say, when 

 the pollen of one species was applied to another, and there could 

 be no doubt with respect to the parentage. Whenever any 

 doubt existed as to the origin of the pollen, the hybrid or half- 

 breed was to receive some name different from that of the com- 

 bined names (Art. 37, 40). 



" Should your Committee, like ourselves, recognize the incon- 

 venience attendant on the combined names, they would do well 

 to persist in this restriction ; for example, they would beg of 

 horticulturists to assure themselves, before giving a double name, 

 that all the proper precautions had been taken to prevent the 

 access of strange pollen by means of wind or insects. The com- 

 bined names would then be confined to those cases in which an 

 extremely accurate experimentalist had taken all needful precau- 

 tions to obtain a certain result, — that is to say, that double 

 names would be mostly confined to scientific books, and rarely ad- 

 mitted into mere garden catalogues. The thousand and one 

 crosses in which it is not absolutely certain whether a single 

 pollen only has had access would receive names analogous to 

 those of the species if we have to do with hybrids, or to those of 

 seedlings or sports if they be half-breeds, while many would re- 

 ceive no especial name, which would be the most reasonable 

 practice. 



" We may remark, in passing, how much more reasonable the 

 breeders of domestic animals are than the raisers of cultivated 

 plants. They give names to the half-breeds between the races of 

 the same species, but there is a certain point at which they stop. 

 They have not the assurance to give names to all the forms ; as, 

 for example, to dogs which spring from individuals which are 



