SUMMER AND EARLY AUTUMN CHRYSANTHEMUMS. 187 



to grow new sorts, but, so to speak, to cultivate the judges of 

 them and develop the taste. Hitherto, with the late sorts, we 

 may consider they have been exotics in the climate of England, 

 requiring the aid of glass to flower them, that flowering being 

 too late to hope for seed ; and even when, by extraordinary care, 

 early shoots were bloomed soon in the season under glass, there 

 was wanting the aid of vast numbers of flies, bees, and other 

 flying things so essential and prevalent in July and August. When 

 I first found that Nanum, the " Sistou " of the French, bloomed 

 in May and June, and that the wild English Chrysanthemum 

 Leucanthemum, or Ox-eye Daisy, bloomed in May and ripened 

 good seed, I quite expected to get good seed from it also ; but for 

 years I failed with that and other early sorts, till the conclusion 

 came that all these beautiful double flowers, if perfect, were 

 females without pollen. This seems correct, for if a good double 

 sort is grown in a poor, starved way, there will sometimes be 

 what we call a weedy eye in the blooms, and this weedy eye is the 

 seat of the florets that produce the pollen, and, as far as my 

 experience goes, leads me to the conclusion that the florets of 

 this weedy eye are both male and female. Thus, then, if we 

 have quite double flowers and want seed of them, we must have 

 growing near at hand, and in bloom at the same time, either poor 

 flowers of the same sort, or, probably, what is much better, single 

 or semi-double plants of other sorts. This belief is confirmed from 

 the fact that I have raised good seed and seedlings from Salter's 

 Early Blush, which was quite double, and as fine a plant of that 

 sort as I ever grew. Mr. AdamForsaith has said that " hybrid- 

 ising the Chrysanthemum is fudge ! " (See Gardeners' Magazine, 

 April 20, 1872 ; in Burbidge's " The Chrysanthemum," page 45.) 

 But this is quite wrong. Dr. Walcott, of New York, has done this 

 artificially, and the semi-early variety, Sam Henshaw, is one 

 of the direct results of a cross between Viceroy of Egypt and 

 Comte de Germiny ; and though my own seed was not obtained 

 by a regular cross, but by the natural action of flies and bees, the 

 plants and sorts thus produced are quite as \aluable, though 

 perhaps a greater quantity of seedlings have to be raised to pro- 

 cure one good sort from the seed naturally fertilised. Generally 

 speaking, probably from 200 to 400 seedlings would have to be 

 raised my way to get one worth saving, but I do not know Dr. 

 Walcott's or any other raiser's experience in that respect. 



