96 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



up and kept for a week or ten days. I have obtained seed 

 supposed to be from such fertilisation, but as the seedlings have 

 not yet flowered the fertilisation may have been by the wind 

 after the attempted trial. If you wish to be successful, make 

 the same cross with at least a dozen flowers, as seeding is not 

 always brought to perfection. 



Then the question comes in, What kind of crosses should one 

 attempt ? I believe for beginners it is the best to take natural 

 species and to make the cross both ways, keeping a record of 

 each, so as to see which produces the best results. But I find 

 that out of doors, unless under very favourable circumstances, 

 it is very hard to get seed. I advise people to abstain from 

 using muticus for a cross either way, as well as all species which 

 have secondary flowers of an imperfect or varying character. 

 The difficulty of obtaining seed from many of the beautiful 

 hybrids is very great, During nine years' observation with from 

 50 to 150 varieties, and from 5,000 to 50,000 bulbs, I have 

 only in two summers saved seed from anything besides pseudo- 

 Narcissus, muticus, spurius, princeps, and poeticus. In other 

 seasons the seed-pods withered and came to nothing in June. 



When seed has been produced, my advice is to sow it at once 

 in deep pans and cover it with a quarter of an inch of soil ; keep it 

 in a frame in the shade, protected from rain, till the end of 

 October or the beginning of November, then sink the pans in the 

 ground and protect sufficiently to prevent the pans being split by 

 the frost. Do not shift the bulbs till they have had two seasons' 

 growth, and, if you live in a cold climate, three. You will find 

 that the bulbs will have sunk quite half-way down a 5 -inch 

 deep pan. The average number of years before flowering with me 

 is five, so that a considerable amount of patience is required. I 

 hope that more people will try the raising of new varieties, as the 

 oft-repeated failures of the many will cause the success of the few 

 to be better appreciated. Nothing increases the value of anything 

 so much as realising the difficulty of getting it. 



Eut to proceed. Another point about the Narcissus, from a 

 grower's point of view, is, By what general characteristics are we 

 to classify the newly raised varieties ? In judging the merits of 

 those exhibited before this Society, I believe size, colour, shape, 

 and constitution are all taken into consideration. Now I think size 

 ought to be relative to some original form, colour to some class, 



