PROGRESS IN CHRYSANTHEMUMS. 



141 



circle to begin with would suffice for her to fill the universe with 

 varieties of beautiful forms, each having in itself the power to 

 generate an infinity of other forms ; and yet the simple circle 

 should be the foundation from first to last— the Divine idea of 

 the pattern of the orbs in space as well as the flowers that adorn 

 them. You say all flowers are not composites, and not all are 

 of regular form, but the circle underlies them all, and, like the 

 world itself, each may be said to revolve upon a centre. 



Geographical influences, probably, have been peculiarly ope- 

 rative in the development of the Chrysanthemum. Its range of 

 territory in the Far East is greater than it has in the whole of 

 Europe, and the peninsula of the Corea appears to have been 

 especially favourable to the transition from the compact form 

 originating in North-western China to the diffuse form prevalent 

 in Japan. 



The Corea is a cold mountainous country, and cold favours 

 the doubling of the Chrysanthemum by suppressing fertility, for 

 the tubular florets more readily change to the ligulate form when 

 no longer capable of producing pollen in juxtaposition with active 

 stigmas. Atmospheric humidity is about equally operative with 

 cold in suppressing the reproductive power, and this again tends 

 to the encouragement of doubling. Thus the Japanese, who ob- 

 tained their Chrysanthemums through the Corea, have formed a 

 race of flowers characterised by a profusion of ligulate florets of 

 extravagant proportions and irregular forms ; and our friends in 

 the South of France, having a warm and dry climate, have been 

 enabled to restore fertility by producing single and Anemone 

 forms, the overplus of their seed-beds running to Japanese forms 

 of infertility. Incurved flowers have prospered in this cold 

 country, which is not only, to speak in a general way, too cold 

 to ripen seed, but too cold for the production of the pollen that 

 must precede the process. The names of the Anemone forms tell 

 us whence they came, and the lesson of the story as thus viewed 

 appears to be, that the first step towards obtaining Chrysanthemum 

 seed will be to make a climate expressly for the purpose, and to 

 encourage in that climate the production of tubular florets, for so 

 long as you disbud and feed high, and repudiate discs, you may 

 whistle for seed and grow weary of whistling. 



In all the early forms of the flower it may be said there is 

 suspicion of singleness. Observe the beautiful Pink Quilled, as 



