338 A Notice of certain Seedling Varieties of Amaryllis. 



announce that these seedlings actually exceed those from 

 which they are derived in both respects, as is evident from 

 the specimens exhibited this day, which have blossomed in 

 one of the stoves in the garden of the Society at Chiswick. 



It is stated by Mr. Herbert that the twenty-four bulbs 

 which he sent to the Society, were each the offset of a differ- 

 ent seedling. There do not however appear to be more than 

 nine which are capable of being distinguished from each 

 other, and of these only four are remarkably superior in 

 beauty to the plants named as their parents. It is also obvi- 

 ous, that none of the plants bear a decided resemblance to 

 any of their supposed parents, except to Amaryllis rutila, to 

 which they are so similar, that a botanist, in ignorance of 

 their history, would not have hesitated to refer them all to 

 that species ; of which indeed it may still be doubted whe- 

 ther they are not mere natural varieties, rather than hybrid 

 productions ; for Mr. Herbert's admission,* that in certain 

 cases the pollen of A.fulgida was not applied till some time 

 after that of A. rutila, and the absence of similarity in the 

 seedlings to the former plant, are sufficient to create a doubt 

 whether the impregnation was affected by A.fulgida; and 

 the female parent is stated to have been a seedling ob- 

 tained by an intermixture of A. equestris and A. vittata, but 

 it may probably have been a mere variety of the former, and 

 it is to be suspected, that it must have been so, since no cir- 

 cumstance whatsoever in the seedling plants indicates the 

 presence of A. vittata. 



If, therefore, the apparently complex origin of Mr. Her- 

 bert's seedlings be thus explained away, by reducing their 



* See Horticultural Transactions, Vol.iv. page 43. 



