A GARDEN OF CRINVMS. 



597 



implements and machines, put on view by native 

 houses. The fact is, more space is devoted to 

 garden tools and mechanisms, than to plants. 



Worthy of particular notice is a plant-house in 

 the small, yet beautifully shrubbed and treed park. 

 Neither in the United States or in Britain has the 



writer seen one of similar construction. It is built 

 in light and graceful iron arches supported by 32 

 ornamental iron columns, supplied (so read the 

 plates on each) by J. Plena, calle Villar rool 15, 

 Barcelona. W. Loda. 



Baireloyia. 



A GARDEN OF CRINUMS. 



M FRONT of the site se- 

 lected for my cottage was 

 a pool about 150 feet in 

 diameter, and eminently 

 suitable for the cultiva- 

 tion of malaria microbes. 

 The bottom was of oozy 

 peat or muck, and at the 

 surface, half floating, grow- 

 ing and dead vegetation a 

 foot or two in depth. A 

 survey showed sufficient fall, by beginning the drain 

 a quarter of a mile away, and after the usual delays, 

 six-inch tile was laid and the bottom of my pond 

 lay bare. Thirty barrels of lime sufficed to kill the 

 microbes. Sand was brought by wheelbarrows and 

 spread over the surface a few inches deep, and in 

 another year I had as fine a garden spot as could 

 be desired. 



Among other plants, useful or ornamental, a few spe- 

 cies of crinum that had grown but slowly on the higher 

 land thrived exceedingly. A random experiment or two 

 in hybridizing succeeded so well that, two years ago, I 

 became fired with ambition to possess all the crinums 

 that were obtainable, and to study their relationship as 

 indicated by the possibility of crossing the different 

 species. So catalogues were conned, some directors of 

 foreign gardens and societies were consulted through the 

 mails, and packages of bulbs ordered from England and 

 Germany and Italy and India (though with quaking of 

 the "pocket nerve" when that unknown quantity, the 

 possible express bill, was considered), until finally a good 

 collection had been brought together without incurring 

 a very serious outlay. Then my crinum garden began 

 to really deserve the name. A sector of the circle was 

 appropriated to them, and the 43 named and half as 

 many unnamed varieties were made at home in their 

 new quarters, together with a lesser collection of pan- 

 cratiums and their allies. 



When the blossoms began to appear — not many of 

 them the first year, however — the buds were watched 

 with absorbing interest ; and when the flowers opened, 

 the available authorities were consulted to see if this or 

 that were "true to name." The fallibility of human 

 things in general, and of nurserymen in particular, did 

 not fail of abundant exemplification even in the 17 spe- 



cies which have bloomed so far ; but experience in 

 growing rare palm seeds, where correct naming is the 

 rare exception, caused these " mistakes " to be accepted 

 with resignation, the more so as everyone was a beauty, 

 irrespective of its name. 



But I was anxious to begin the work of hybridizing, 

 and a little watching in the evening twilight showed that 

 these flowers had attractions for others besides their 

 owner. The hawk-moths came in numbers ; some poised 

 like humming birds, and delicately sipped the honey with 

 their long unrolled tongues, but others, with shorter 

 probosces, banged and butted into the open flowers until 

 they fairly creaked, and then left them all sooty within 

 with detached scales and hairs, the moths meanwhile 

 having thoroughly powdered themselves with pollen to 

 distribute it wherever they went. 



So it was necessary to remove the stamens before ma- 

 turity, and then, to prevent pollen from being brought 

 from neighbors' gardens, each flower was pinned in 

 paper after crossing it with such pollen as might be 

 selected. 



The crinums were rather a sorry sight thereafter, with 

 their heads all done up in curl-papers, and this sacrifice 

 in the cause of science was hardly appreciated by the 

 visitors who came to admire the flowers. Often the 

 humble bees came and seemed much puzzled, and pro- 

 voked as well, as they tried one flower after another, 

 finally going off with an angry buzz that sounded a note 

 or two higher than their ordinary complacent hum. 



Usually the flowers open at dusk, but the stamens 

 burst sometime during the preceding forenoon, one or 

 two sorts as early as seven o'clock on warm, sunny morn- 

 ings ; though usually nine o'clock is early enough to make 

 the round of the garden, removing the stamens from all 

 buds that should burst that day, and laying a sufficient 

 number of anthers of each sort in its little labeled paper 

 envelop. Each flower thus treated has its stigma dusted 

 with pollen collected from another sort the previous 

 day. and a little tag is looped around its pedicel, bearing 

 the name of the pollen parent. As long as the flower re- 

 mains unwithered, the enclosing paper is unpinned daily 

 and fresh pollen of the chosen kind is laid upon the 

 stigma. Memoranda are made of the combinations tried. 

 In four weeks, if successful, the seed is ripe ; or if other, 

 wise, in half that time the entire flower has withered 

 and fallen away. 



In this way, in the last two years, from the 16 species 

 that have bloomed and matured 121 different crosses have 



