THE HIPPEASTRUM (AMARYLLIS). 



245 



The beauty of the Amaryllids could scarcely fail to attract 

 the attention of amateurs. I use the word Amaryllids in the 

 broader sense of including any plants belonging to the Natural 

 Order of which Amaryllis Belladonna supplied the type, under 

 whatever generic name they may be at present known. The 

 facility with which the bulbs could be imported alive, even in 

 the age prior to steam navigation, created for them a demand 

 that could be supplied without much risk ; and in the first 

 decades of the present century collections of exotic plants from 

 the far East and from the far West consisted chiefly of bulbous 

 plants and Orchids. Among the amateur collections of Ama- 

 ryllids formed at the beginning of this century, that of Mr. Griffin 

 at South Lambeth seems to have been exceptionally well cared 

 for and rich in species ; the name of the owner is kept in remem- 

 brance by the genus Griffinia. Another collection, formed by a 

 clergyman at Spofforth, in Yorkshire, was destined to become 

 famous throughout the world by reason of the series of important 

 results, both to science and to horticulture, achieved by the 

 untiring zeal and energy of its owner, who minutely studied, 

 assiduously cultivated, and experimented upon every species of 

 his favourite family he could procure. This was that good old 

 Churchman, Dean Herbert, who published the results of his 

 investigations from time to time in the Botanical Magazine, the 

 Botanical Begister, and the Transactions of the Horticultural 

 Society of London. Dean Herbert not only cultivated his bulbs 

 for the sake of their flowers, but he seeded them, crossed and 

 intercrossed them, and even fertilised species with their own 

 pollen as well as with the pollen of other species ; in fact, he 

 varied the circumstances in every possible way, making dis- 

 coveries so remarkable and so unexpected that in that pre-Dar- 

 winian age, when the operations of Nature were often imperfectly 

 interpreted, and even wrongly interpreted, the good clergyman 

 incurred no small amount of reproach for promulgating facts and 

 deducing inferences from them that were far in advance of the 

 prevailing notions of his time. 



Herbert seeded the Belladonna Lily; he also seeded the 

 American Amaryllises, and found, as we or anyone else may find, 

 that the seeds of the latter differ essentially from those of the 

 former, for while the seeds of the Belladonna are few in number, 

 large and bulb-shaped like those of a Crinum or a Clivia (Iman- 



