RAISING NEW VARIETIES OF CHRYSANTHEMUMS. 131 



fact that out of over 250 seedlings of 1894, selected from a 

 quarter of a pint of seed, only three were single ; and it is 

 difficult to believe that the florets of the ray can be proved 

 to have furnished better results. 



We must keep in mind, then, what are the essential organs : 

 the andrcecium (the male fertilising organ), with its individual 

 stamens ; and the gyncecium (the female organ), containing the 

 ovary with its unfertilised seed, and having at its apex the stigma, 

 a minute opening at the fore end whereof leading down into the 

 ovary. 



We may now consider the method by which fertilisation is 

 effected. 



The Chrysanthemum is characteristically entomophilous — 

 the insects love it. Sir John Lubbock, in his charming "British 

 Wild Flowers in Relation to Insects," has told us that the 

 grouping together of so many florets into capitula brings with it 

 three results pertinent to insect fertilisation, namely : 1, con- 

 spicuousness ; 2, attractiveness, as honey is easily obtained 

 from so many individual flowers without change of place ; and, 

 3, better chance of fertilisation, as not one, but many florets 

 are touched by the visiting insect. 



So, at first glance, it would appear that self -impregnation, as 

 opposed to cross-fertilisation, would be very conspicuously the rule, 

 but a closer investigation of the matter tends to qualify this 

 assumption. In animal nature interbreeding tends to weakness 

 and retrogression, so in the vegetable kingdom self- fertilisation 

 tends to similar results, and Dame Nature has her own marvellous 

 ways of seeing carried out the marching orders which she sends 

 forth throughout creation — " Advance ! " So in the Chrysan- 

 themum cross-fertilisation is well provided for, or, in other words, 

 self-fertilisation has certain impediments placed in its path. The 

 florets of each capitulum open centripetally — i.e. inwards from the 

 circumference — and they are proterandrous. An insect, we are 

 told, generally visits a capitulum centripetally — that is, it crawls 

 from the circumference of the head towards the centre. But 

 when the stamens of the outer rows of florets are ripe and pro- 

 duce pollen, the stigmas of the inner florets are not yet ready to 

 receive it, so no fertilisation results. Besides, the androecium 

 being absent in so many of the ray florets, there is, for a period, 

 little pollen for the insects to carry on their inland journey. The 



