458 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



were apt to say, that if they had not gather'd them with their own Hands, 

 they should have beheved they had been impos'd upon ; at last they 

 all agreed mutually to exchange the Seeds of this and other Flowers 

 annually, and every one had good Success. This Story, I think, 

 plainly shews how much the Change of Air and Soil contributes to 

 improve somic particular Vegetables." 



It was experiences such as these, no doubt, which gave rise to a 

 theory which, though wide of the truth, gained a certain measure of 

 behef from its apparent soundness and common-sense, and which we 

 find stated in Hill's well-known work entitled " Eden, or a Compleat 

 Body of Gardening " (1757). Hill's advice to such as desire to have 

 many doubles is as follows : — * 



" Let him select such single Stocks for seed as are large, robust, 

 well growing, and would naturally have a vast Multicude of Flowers ; 

 and such as have in some t lowers somewhat above the proper number 

 of Petals, five, six, or more ; this is the first Tendency in Nature 

 to Doubleness ; and this he should carefully watch for the farther 

 Improvement." 



This method of procedure is scarcely less laborious and no more 

 successful than that advocated by Plat, for, as anyone who grows 

 Stocks on a large scale can testify, the flower with one or two extra 

 petals is a variation occurring so rarely as to involve a tedious search, 

 and, as we now know, disappointment will await anyone attempting to 

 obtain doubles by this method from a pure strain of singles. In this 

 connexion the statement of the French horticulturist Chate, in whose 

 family the cultivation of Stocks and Wallflowers had been carried 

 on for thirty years, is of some interest. In his treatise on the cultiva- 

 tion of these plants he remarks : " I may add as a personal observation 

 that I have met so rarely with plants possessing this fifth petal that 

 it would have been impossible to count upon such a rare phenomenon 

 as a means of procuring seed for my cultures." f 1^ ^3,y further be 

 pointed out that not only are individuals with such flowers rare 

 exceptions, but also that the variation may perhaps appear in only 

 one flower, or at most in only a few out of the whole number borne in 

 a season by one individual, and in many years no such abnormal 

 flowers are observed at all. In any case it seems clear that this 

 abnormality has no direct connexion with fufl doubling and is not 

 inherited. 



One writer of the seventeenth century, however, appears to have 

 had a true insight into the matter, for he plainly states the fundamental 

 fact which provides the clue to the whole explanation. In a work 

 entitled " Flora, Ceres, et Pomona," which appeared in 1665, written 

 by one John Rea, gentleman, who had evidently given some attention 

 to the subject, we find the following passage :~" Neither do the seeds 

 of every single kind {i.e. of Stock) produce any double, but if you have 

 good seeds of a right kind, you may from them raise many double 



* p. 567. 



t loC. Cit, p. 64. 



