24 
ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
superfluous part of the flower to the organs of generation, or to 
the existence in the vegetable kingdom of a power analogous to 
the nervous in the animal, hut of which we are as yet in total 
ignorance. 
Lastly, I would remark that, to enable reliable conclusions to 
be drawn upon any of these points, we require an accumulation 
of data derived from the careful observation of very many un- 
biassed workers, whose results have been obtained from experi- 
ments conducted with scientific precision upon all our flowers and 
fruits. 
Such an accumulation of recorded facts (if they could be 
obtained) would prove a source of the greatest interest to the 
philosopher, by their tendency to throw some light upon the 
working of i^'ature's laws, and could not but afl'ord most valuable 
information for the guidance of the practical horticulturist ; and 
moreover by freeing horticulture from all empiricism, place it in its 
true and legitimate position among the modern sciences. 
[With regard to the influence of the size of pollen grains upon 
hybrid-formation, the following seems to be a case in point. It is 
quoted from the Eeport of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society 
for 1872, p. 184: — Mr. Wylie found that generally the pollen 
grains of grapes were of oblong form, while those of the Scupper- 
nong, the great wild grape of the South, were smaller and more 
spherical. He found that he could not fertilise the Scuppernong 
with pollen from other species, but he did succeed in impreg- 
nating the foreign grapes with pollen from the Scuppernong. 
'His inference was that the pollen-grains being smaller in the 
Scuppernong than in other varieties, the canal through which they 
have to pass to reach the ovule in that species is also smaller, and 
thus he explained the results of his experiments. The smaller 
grains could pass through the large tube, but the larger grains 
could not pass through the small tube." There is the same mis- 
apprehension as to the part played by the pollen-grains as is alluded 
to above, but this does not afl'ect the fact stated. — Eds.] 
