40 On the Production of Hybrid Vegetables. 



An idea is somehow prevalent, that if vegetable mules 

 are fertile, their offspring will revert to the similitude of the 

 original female parent. This appears extremely improba- 

 ble, and, if true, almost inexplicable ; I have not yet flowered 

 a sufficient number of seedlings from mules to speak confi- 

 dently from experience, but I have no reason, as yet, for 

 believing it. The only one of my seedlings from Johnson's 

 Amaryllis Reginae-vittata, which has yet flowered, was in 

 every point precisely similar to its hybrid parent, which 

 seems thereby to perpetuate itself as a distinct species. 

 Great caution will be necessary with respect to the supposi- 

 tion of seedlings from mules reverting to the likeness of the 

 original parent, because it is quite certain, that mules which 

 are fertile may be fecundated by the dust of either, and 

 especially of the female, parent; and, if it is at all within 

 reach, the dust may be brought, unperceived, by the wind 

 or insects. The bees were so busy last summer amongst the 

 different Gladioli that were growing in the same quarter of 

 my garden, that if some of the seedlings from my mules 

 were to appear like the original female parent, I should have 

 no confidence that they might not have been accidentally 

 fecundated by its dust, especially as the stigma of Gladiolus 

 begins to expand before its anthers. 



those from Amaryllis continued dormant, in four separate pots, till yesterday, 

 when one seedling made its appearance, and the other seeds appear to be in 

 motion. The seedlings are all in too young a state to judge from appearance of 

 their parentage ; but if the last should prove to have been produced by the dust 

 of withered Gladiolus flowers, brought by the wind, it will seem that such obsolete 

 pollen produces not only imperfect pods, but seeds, of which the vegetation will 

 be more tardy. 



