CROSS-FERTILISATION OF FLORISTS' FLOWERS. 



207 



vation 221 years ago. These, of course, have long since passed 

 away, having been replaced by other and doubtless improved 

 forms produced by florists, who have left us the results of their 

 work, but have given us no indication whatever as to how it was 

 done. But we have evidence that quite as good varieties of the 

 Show or Flaked Carnation were in existence 110 years ago as we 

 have in our gardens now. There is a plate of Franklin's ' Tartar ' 

 published in Curtis's "Bot. Mag." in 1787. I showed this 

 coloured figure toMr.B. Simonite of Sheffield, the leading northern 

 raiser and grower of this class of Carnations, and he was com- 

 pelled to admit that no finer variety of this class was now in 

 existence. 



Mr. Martin B. Smith has informed me that he has learned 

 from his own work at Hayes that the pollen parent has more 

 influence hi giving colour and form to the resultant seedling 

 than has the seed parent. He says, " The prepotency of the 

 pollen parent is beyond doubt," although I observed, in looking 

 over his numerous experiments, that it was not invariably so> 

 as will be seen from the two following tables, which I have 

 drawn up from his notes and records. My own experience is 

 somewhat similar ; and I have come to the conclusion that not 

 only in the Carnation, but in all other florists' flowers, we 

 must choose as a seed-bearer a plant with good habit, sound 

 and vigorous constitution, and the variety from which the 

 pollen is taken should possess flowers of fine form and of 

 decided colours, all the better, of course, if the plant possesses 

 a good habit and sound constitution also. 



In sending the notes from which the tables on pages 208 and 

 209 have been compiled Mr. Martin Smith writes : — " They are the 

 result of observations since 1892, but I fear they are of a very 

 negative character. Unfortunately the evidence on one side, viz., 

 the prepotency of the female parent, must always be tainted by 

 suspicion, for if the characteristics of the male parent are entirely 

 absent it is so easy to urge that ' the cross was not a true one.' 

 I can only say that we take the greatest care. We keep all bees 

 out of the houses and never mark a cross as ' sure ' unless the 

 flower collapses within the proper time. When my records began, 

 however, we were not so careful as we are now, and the bees had 

 access to the flowers ; thus a cross may have given evidence of 

 its being 1 sure ' by the collapse of the bloom, but we had no 



