DAFFODIL CONFERENCE AND EXHIBITION. 



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the work of raising seedling Narcissi. To those who have an eye 

 chiefly to the pleasure, I must say that they will find the work 

 tedious at first, while they are waiting the four, five, or six years 

 which must elapse before their seedlings flower, but that the 

 waiting will be forgotten when they have reached the happy 

 stage of having a batch of plants coming into bloom every spring. 



With regard to practical details of cultivation, &c, I find it 

 best to keep the young plants in pans, pots, or boxes, plunged 

 in ashes in a cold frame, for their first two years, and then to 

 plant them out in slightly raised beds in open quarters. The 

 Corbularias, triandrus, and such small and half-hardy sorts 

 may be kept in their pans until they flower. I recommend care- 

 ful fertilisation by hand, and the excision, in a young state, of 

 the anthers of the mother-flower, for although some of the 

 Narcissi may be " proterandrous," yet my own experience leads 

 me to believe that the poeticus section and some others are 

 rapidly self-fertilised. It is safer, too, that the mother-flower 

 should be covered by glass or very fine muslin, for though bees 

 and insects generally are not very fond of Daffodils, yet they 

 haunt them to some extent, and a breeze bears the fine dry 

 pollen a long way. 



Discussion. 



Referring to the origin of the early-flowering poeticus ornatus, 

 Mr. Wolley-Dod said he had no doubt that in fields full of 

 any variety there would be as much as a month's difference in 

 the time of the flowering of some of the forms. The common 

 wild Daffodil in England was a case in point. It generally 

 flowers in April, but some forms bloom earlier than this, and 

 some later, and he said that he had taken the trouble to pick out 

 the early-flowering kinds in his own collection, and plant them by 

 themselves. He had no doubt that the same thing occurred in 

 N. poeticus, and hence the origin ofjj. ornatus. 



Mr. John Feasee said that during the interesting remarks 

 made by Mr. Engleheart he showed a white Daffodil which was 

 supposed to have been raised from N. moschatus. In looking at 

 the flower it would be observed that the tube was short, and that 

 fact may be due to the doubling of the flower. 



In regard to the raising of seedlings, Mr. Fraser said no doubt 

 the subject was a very interesting one to specialists and enthu- 

 siasts, to the latter class of whom he was afraid he himself was 



