334 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



belief that to obtain this last flower you had only to dig up the 

 small single wild flower and to plant it in good soil in a garden. 

 This matter has often been discussed in gardening journals. 

 Witnesses are never wanting who positively assert that they have 

 effected this transformation in their own gardens, and I have 

 received many private letters, both from amateurs and from 

 professed gardeners, giving detailed accounts of their experience 

 in producing this change. The doubling is alleged to take place 

 not in one or two flowers out of many, but wholesale, and 

 generally in the second or third year after transplanting, and 

 when once this advance has taken place the flowers will not 

 revert to their former small single condition. I am perfectly 

 satisfied of the good faith of several of my informants, but not 

 equally sure of the accuracy and continuity of their observation. 

 Still, I preserve an open mind on the subject. It is about 

 fifteen years since my attention was first directed to it. During 

 that time I have done all in my power, by high and low cultivation, 

 to raise a large double Daffodil out of small single-flowered bulbs, 

 but in vain. Not only this, but I have asked my correspondents 

 in these cases to supply me with some of the wild Daffodils 

 before transformation, and some of them when transformed into 

 doubles. The singles sent me have in all cases continued single 

 and small, and the doubles, double and large. Also six years ago 

 I distributed to about forty gardens, including all where this doub- 

 ling was alleged to have taken place, a number of bulbs of wild 

 single psetido-narcissus, giving careful instructions for isolating 

 and observing them ; whenever I have heard the result up to this 

 time, the bulbs have either died out or still retained their small 

 single form. It may be added that the large double Daffodil of 

 gardens is a most prolific and persistent bulb, with a very strong 

 constitution. It often comes from the south of France, mixed 

 with pallidas prcecox, and I have watched the way in which it 

 gradually overwhelms the weaker bulbs in a clump and super- 

 sedes them, giving rise to the belief, which I have more than once 

 heard, that pallidus prcecox also becomes transformed. This so- 

 called double Telamonius, however, is in more than one way a 

 remarkable bulb. It can be raised from seed, not only of itself, 

 which it ripens under favourable conditions, but from the seed 

 of other varieties. It grows in Pembrokeshire amongst the 

 Tenby Daffodil, and I have raised it more than once from the 



