82 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



vigorous, medium, and weak growth respectively in each culture, 

 and the numbers of singles, doubles, failures, and deaths in each 

 category, as well as the numbers of singles and doubles among the 

 (usually) twelve plants most vigorous at potting time. 



One hundred and eighty lots of seeds were sown. One (No. 143) 

 failed to germinate. Four others (Nos. n, 79, 159, and 171) gave 

 but twelve seedlings between them and were not pricked out. The 

 remainder, 6024 seedlings, were pricked out, and 2056 were potted 

 on. 



As the table shows, at pricking-out time 2814 seedlings v/ere classed 

 as vigorous, 2670 as medium, 1540 as weak ; but the final figures for 

 flowering showed that there were a number of strains throwing a large 

 proportion of singles, i.e., not good strains of double stocks (marked f 

 in the table), and if we ignore these we have at pricking-out time 2197 

 vigorous, 20 1 1 medium, and 11 98 weak seedlings. It is unfortunate 

 that the conditions in the pricking-out boxes, where the plants not 

 selected for potting-on were allowed to remain, did not permit all 

 to flower, but of the vigorous ones, whether in pots or boxes, that 

 flowered, 1037 plants, or 70*3 per cent., were double, of the medium 650, 

 or 59*5 per cent., of the weak 163, or 53 per cent. 



These figures therefore confirm in every way the suggestion Miss 

 Saunders brought forward, as indeed do the figures for the plants 

 potted on, which all flowered, giving 1006 doubles, or 64 per cent., while 

 the less vigorous ones at potting time gave only 60 per cent. 



The general high average of doubles among the flowering plants 

 (62 per cent.) suggests that the number of singles among those that 

 failed to flower would have been much higher than these figures show, 

 and it is to be noted that the weak plants at pricking-out time were 

 the worst in flowering in the boxes, for while the failures among the 

 originally vigorous left in the boxes amounted to 51*8 per cent., and 

 among the medium 60 per cent., those among the weak were 84 per 

 cent. 



Miss Saunders' observation that selection of the more vigorous 

 seedlings in a good strain of double stocks gives a higher proportion 

 of doubles than the strain as a whole will give is therefore borne out 

 by these observations, and the figures also suggest that the selection 

 is best made at the time of pricking out, rather than later when the 

 plants have attained a larger size, for the proportion of doubles among 

 the selections made then is much greater than among the selections 

 made when the plants were potted on. 



It will be seen also that even in the poor strains the tendency of 

 the early-vigorous seedlings is in the same direction. 



