XXXvi PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



the Carnation and Picotee only from my own experience, and from what 

 I have seen of the garden or German Stock. I have worked upon the 

 Carnation over thirty years, raising a considerable number annually, and 

 always sa^'ing the seed from the best double flowers, and from the very 

 best varieties in the various classes. Taking the average of seasons, I get 

 5 per cent, double flowers as good as the parents, 12 per cent, single 

 flowers, of every shade of colour favoiu*ed by the Carnation. This leaves 

 83 per cent, of flowers which are double but which are in no respect equal 

 in form, &:c., to the parents. The finest lot of choice varieties I ever had 

 was in a hot, dry season. The plants were well supplied with water, and 

 many one-year-old plants produced upwards of 200 blooms each. I 

 remember discussing the production of Stock seed some ten years ago 

 with Mr. John Ward, then, as now, a market grower at Leytonstone in 

 Essex. Speaking from his own experience, he informed me that he 

 always obtained the largest percentage of double-flowered Stocks when 

 he saved the seed from plants grown in pots. Subsequently I was being 

 shown over a large establishment in Germanv, where an enormous 

 quantity of seed is annually saved, and I found that all the best ten-week 

 Stock seed was saved exactly as Mr. Ward saved his in Essex. Thousands 

 of flower-pots about 5 or 6 inches in diameter were arranged on a wooden 

 stage fully exposed to the open air, and I was distinctly informed that it 

 was necessary to grow the plants in this way to make sure of the seed 

 producing a large percentage of double flowers. The Pojjpy has a greater 

 tendency to produce double flowers than any other plant known to me, 

 and certainly the tendency is greater in rather exhausted soil, as can 

 easily be proved by allowing a bed to sow itself from the previous year's 

 bloom, and the plants to flower on the same ground without making an 

 addition of soil or manure to the bed." Mr. Wilks remarked, " If that be 

 so, ought not all the Poppies in our corn fields to have become double 

 long ago ? " 



Abut Hon Hybrids. — Professor Marcus Hartog sent the following 

 communication, with specimens, from Queen's College, Cork :- — I send 

 you herewith specimens of some of my new Abutilon hybrids. The male 

 was Abutilon megapotamicum, and the mother-plant a hybrid of the 

 Darwinii ' Boule de Neige ' t}'pe, which we called ' Petticoat,* from its 

 wide-open habit. This plant is an exceptionally free seeder ; its flowers 

 are orange, streaked with brown, and its leaves show very little trace of 

 variegation. The hybrids all show a marked transverse depression at the 

 insertion of the deltoid calyx-lobes on the tube, and most of them show 

 colour in the calyx, like the male, and some sign of deep red or purple 

 spotting in the depths of the corolla, which in most plants is elongated 

 like the sire. The one that I have called ' Blanche ' has a much more 

 spreading corolla, of more substance than the rest, with a clear tendency 

 to become pleiomerous — to double, in fact. 



" Variegation is very in-egular, even in the open ground, and become? 

 very shght in the winter quarters. It appears as a margination. gradually 

 increasing till the only dark green parts lie along the greater veins. 

 Again, in the open, some of the plants exhibit a marked purpling of the 

 parenchyma on either side of the veins, which I have seen in no other 

 Abutilons. 



