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REPORT ON THE 



pollen from gold-tubed Varieties, are better in tins respect than 

 the old blues. 



Memories come back to me here of some old flowers that 

 might have been helpful towards new combinations of colours 

 that are faint and timid, and wavering yet. 



Such were Moore's Violet, a green-edged flower, with violet 

 body colour, and a green edge of Traill's (Rev. George Jeans), 

 in which the ground colour was of a lilac tint. In white edges 

 were Ashton's Bonny Lass, with beautiful violet, and Maria, 

 richer in colour. These, however, and others of like colour, all 

 were weakened by a pale and watery tube ; and further, the 

 ground colour was not of one uniform steadfast shade, which it 

 decidedly ought to be in both edges and self Auriculas. Red or 

 crimson as a ground colour of edged flowers has not yet been 

 obtained of any intensity. Lightbody's Fairy Queen and Star of 

 Bethlehem, and also Smith's Waterloo, were green edges, in 

 which the body tints were a shade of red-plum, and a white 

 edge of McDonald's was lighted up with a brighter red. 

 Chocolate-brown is another possible change in ground colours 

 worthy of being followed up. It occurred in Lightbody's white 

 edge Countess of Dunmore, and in Smith's Ne Plus Ultra. 

 These red and brown ground colours are happily not associated 

 with the weak tube colours of the blues. 



Mr. Simonite, in his Heather Bell and Aurora, has better 

 blue-grounded white edges than the old ones, and the tubes, 

 though not of a strong yellow, have more stability. An offer of 

 a red-grounded green edge occurs in a rather erratic seedling of 

 Mr. Rolfs. The edge is pure but insignificant, and the red 

 ground colour brightens with age, but is too broad, and runs 

 wildly out at the petal edges. Such a flower would be worth 

 crossing with some green-edge seedling of fine form, in which 

 existed the fault of a ground colour much too slight and narrow. 



In new types of colour in selfs the last great acquisition came 

 through Mr. Campbell's success in his efforts to produce a true 

 crimson self. Some fifteen years ago he sent out, as the result 

 of many years' work abounding in failures, two intensely crimson 

 flowers — the one better than the other both in its colour and its 

 rich gold tube, but both of them notched in petal. These 

 flowers have transmitted their colour well to seedlings of better 

 petal. 



