10 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



and I need only mention generally that especial attention is paid 

 to a rise of temperature, exposure to light, the production of 

 vigorous buds by ' high feeding,' and the avoidance of too 

 damp an atmosphere. 



Now recent developments in microscopic gardening have 

 shown, especially in the hands of that clever worker Klebs, that 

 the production of the fruiting organs in Algre — organs which 

 correspond physiologically to the organs we wish to obtain in 

 flowers — is very definitely connected with the action of such 

 factors of the environment as temperature, light, moisture, and 

 food-materials. The principal points of importance in these 

 experiments with the lower microscopic plants, however, con- 

 sist in the fact that the plants themselves are simpler and more 

 under control ; that it is easier to vary one factor at a time and 

 trace its action by changes visible under the microscope ; and 

 that the results occur quickly, hours and days taking the place 

 of weeks and months or years. 



Hence microscopic gardening acquires a very peculiar interest 

 in connection with all studies which are directed to improve our 

 knowledge of the culture of the higher plants, and therefore 

 appeal to horticulturists very directly and especially. 



Microscopic gardening is by no means confined to experts in 

 botany and laboratory methods, however, and certainly one of 

 the best lessons I ever had in this branch of gardening was given 

 me by an old gentleman who for many years had had charge of 

 the hybridising department of one of our largest horticultural 

 firms. He showed me, with great patience and kindness, how 

 he selected pollen and transferred it to the stigmas of the flowers 

 he was operating with, and the precautions he took to prevent 

 certain visitors from rival firms — chiefly bees — from entering his 

 preserves and sowing foreign germs (i.e. weed-pollen) on his pet 

 microscopic culture-beds (i.e. stigmas), and I remember being 

 in ucli impressed at the time with the thought that the bees and 

 flics and other insects, of which Darwin has written so beauti- 

 fully and to such splendid purpose, are really the oldest practi- 

 tioners of this ancient art of microscopic gardening. 



Kor such it is. In artificial cultures the laboratory gardener 

 lias now shown that when a pollen-grain is sown in the sugar- 

 solution which moisten the stigmas of flowers, it absorbs water 

 and oxygen, feeds on the sugar, and grows, just as a seed may 



