Ixii 



ItOYAL IIOETICULTUKAL SOCIETY". 



themselves hybrids of many degrees.' Horticulturists, indeed, 

 have motives for not being so reserved ; but they are not perhaps 

 sufficiently alarmed at the indefinite number to which cultivation 

 may give rise, nor sufficiently convinced of the impossibility or 

 inutility of naming every form. The gardeners of England alone 

 could, if they pleased, in a few years produce a million of new 

 forms ; and no dictionary could contain a million of names. No 

 system of nomenclature could suffice if the objects to be named 

 are innumerable. Good sense must place certain limits. 



" Of certain Signs whieh it might be convenient to introduce. 



" The practice of marking hybrid forms with a X is generally 

 adopted from its convenience. "Would it not be well to have 

 other signs to indicate seedlings and sports ? I do not hesitate to 

 answer this question affirmatively. If conventional marks were 

 introduced iuto catalogues indicating the origin of each particular 

 form, the reader would have some instructive information, and 

 horticulturists would be induced by this practice to note more 

 and more the origin of the forms which they publish. The intro- 

 duction of clearness and precision into such a complicated matter 

 is assuredly most desirable. 



" The sign V , which exists in every printer's fount, because it 

 is used in mathematics, might be adopted for seedlings. Its form 

 reminds us of a young plant springing from the ground and 

 ramifying. 



" As regard sports, I have hunted for a sign which already exists 

 in the printer's fount and which has not a certain sense as a sign 

 of subdivision or distinction. Not finding one amongst mathema- 

 tical signs, it strikes me that the letter Z, which is rarely em- 

 ployed textually, might be suitable. The idea has originated in 

 the fact that sports are an unlooked for, irregular, and, as it were, 

 zig-zag vegetation, like the letter in question. 



" The sign of hybridity might itself be employed under the two 

 forms, if we require great precision. We might put x for hybrids 

 proper (viz. between species), and x for half-breeds (between 

 modifications of species). 



" "We thus have four figures which are in the hands of every 

 printer, which take up little room, and which would indicate 

 nearly what one knows of the origin of the forms. The progress 

 of knowledge would permit one sometimes to unite two or even 

 three of these signs, in order to show through what successive 



