IMPROVEMENT AMONGST PEAS. 



33 



We now come to the means by which these advantages have 

 been and are hereafter to a further extent likely to be secured. 



Firstly, by selection, following a rare natural or insect cross- 

 fertilisation, but more generally by watching the natural ten- 

 dency of the Pea to vary and run back or revert ; and, secondly, 

 by artificial cross-fertilisation and carefully continued selection. 



Kegarding natural or insect cross-fertilisation in the Pea, I 

 had, up to a recent period, concluded that it was practically 

 impossible, but later observations have tended to modify that 

 opinion, and I now hold that this does occur more often than had 

 been anticipated, through the agency of thrips and other minute 

 insects, which appear to feed on the pollen prior to the expansion 

 of the flower; and that the presence of "rogues," as the 

 irregular plants are termed, in a crop of Peas is sometimes due 

 to this agency. Up to the beginning of the present century 

 selection was probably the only means by which the then varieties 

 of Peas had been obtained ; but about that period the great master 

 of horticulture, the late Mr. Thomas Andrew Knight, President 

 of the Horticultural Society of London, turned his attention to 

 the artificial cross -fertilisation of Peas, and with what good suc- 

 cess is attested by his famous tall and dwarf marrows, still grown 

 and in vogue in some localities. The work was subsequently 

 taken up by the late Dr. McLean, of Colchester — who must 

 be considered the father of modern Pea improvements — and has 

 since been largely continued by numerous workers, whose pro- 

 ductions have become mostly available during the past twenty- 

 five years. 



During that period the writer alone has, wisely or unwisely, 

 contributed to the ever-increasing catalogues about fifty existing 

 or departed varieties. It will therefore probably be expected by 

 practical listeners that I should briefly state the means adopted ; 

 and as I have during that period effected some hundreds of crosses 

 between most of the best and approved sorts of Peas, the crosses 

 in many cases being repeated and reversed, and all recorded, I 

 will describe the mode of procedure in artificial cross-fertilisation 

 of the Pea, an operation which has frequently been considered 

 a difficult one, but which in fact, where a good eye, steady hand, 

 and a pair of small sharp-pointed scissors are available, will 

 with but slight practice be found a very simple one. 



As I have previously shown, natural fertilisation usually takes 



D 



