HYBRID NARCISSI. 



37 



sections of these " Weardale " and " Longford Bridge " Narcissi, 

 e.g. of N. Barri, Burbidgei, Leedsi, Nelsoni, has been an open 

 question. Therefore I proposed to myself the task of attempt- 

 ing to " make " all these flowers over again, in order to 

 determine with certainty their origin. The gradual achievement 

 of this undertaking has been, to myself at least, extremely full 

 of interest, and successful beyond my expectation. I have 

 raised, and from time to time exhibited together with their 

 parents, flowers not only typical of every group of these modern 

 hybrids, but in many cases actual reproductions and fac-similes 

 of individual varieties, e.g. of N. incomparabilis " Stella " and 

 Leedsi " Acis," both from Backhouse's collection. Many of my 

 seedling flowers, if "shuffled up" with a handful of Messrs. 

 Barr's named kinds, could scarcely be again distinguished from 

 them. A considerable representative gathering is here on the 

 table in your sight. 



In another task, too, I have been enabled to succeed, namely, 

 that of carrying out more fully a series of experiments in hybrid- 

 isation partly accomplished and partly only suggested by Dean 

 Herbert. One direction of Herbert's great and versatile powers 

 was to the appreciation, long before it was appreciated elsewhere, 

 of the importance of, and of the future in store for, the science of 

 cross-fertilisation. In passing, I would say that he has not yet 

 been accorded his full rank as an acute original thinker and in- 

 vestigator. He was singularly modern in his scientific concep- 

 tions ; for instance, of the experimental method, and in such 

 dicta as that a species " appeared to him to differ not at all from 

 a well-marked local variety," and that " artificial hybridisation, 

 far from confusing botanical classification, was the surest test of 

 scientific division." His experiments, of which the Society has 

 the records, together with his original drawings, in its archives, 

 provided most valuable material for Darwin, with whose name 

 his is not unworthy to stand. 



Probably Herbert's familiarity with the Amaryllidaceae as a 

 special study led him to choose the Narcissi for his experiments. 

 The choice was happy, for, while they are almost all hardy and 

 will, with remarkably few exceptions, intercross to almost infinite 

 combinations, their range of form and colour is large enough to 

 supply well-marked derivation and modification in the hybrids, 

 and yet much simpler and easier to trace when thus transmitted 



it 



