HYBRIDIZATION. 
1^ 
time scarcely a drop of rain falls. The summer heat, however, of Monterey is seldom 
very hot, ranging from 62° to 65° during the daytime ; and the rainy season commences 
in November, and continues for several days without intermission, and finally terminates 
by the end of March ; shortly afterwards the Prairies teem with floral beauty, and immense 
fields of such plants as Escholtzias, Lupinus nanus, Collinsia bicolor, Leptosiphons and 
Nemophila insignis, appear in full bloom, each kind growing in a mass by itself ; but as the 
dry weather sets in shortly afterwards, all soon becomes a dry barren waste, and only trees 
and shrubs remain green, except those few herbaceous plants which are located in moist 
situations, but amidst all of which Zauschneria flowers in the greatest perfection. 
No plant can be of easier cultivation than the Zauschneria calif ornica, for it grows freely 
in any situation or soil in which a Verbena will grow, and is as easily increased from the 
young shoots in spring or summer. Plants struck in March or April will begin to bloom 
freely in June when planted out. It also seeds freely, and if sown and treated like a half- 
hardy annual in spring, will flower by the end of July, and continue so until cut olf by the 
late autumn frosts ; and as the colour of the flowers (bright orange scarlet) is seldom to be 
seen amongst hardy bedding-out plants, it will make an exceedingly good contrast and 
a very desirable plant, being bushy, and growing from one to two feet in height. 
Chiswick, January, 1849. 
HYBRIDIZATION. 
By M. D. Beaton^ Gardener at Shruhland Parle. 
The practical application of hybridizing, or cross-breeding, has not kept pace with the 
progress of improved cultivation, for the last dozen or fifteen years — although the scientific 
bearing of the subject has been fully explained, and widely circulated during that time. It 
is true, great attention has of late years been bestowed on the improvement of a few popular 
genera, which has produced ver}^ marked results. But to obtain a surer insight into the 
mysterious process of cross-breeding, we must push our experiments much further. The 
power of modifying certain peculiarities in plants, which refuse to yield to the ordinary 
process of the hybridizer, is not at present sufliciently known to enable us to lay down rules 
for practice. Yet from some experiments in this direction, I am led to believe that many 
plants now thought to be sterile, and incapable of interbreeding with others, may be so 
managed by a previous course of culture, as to make them yield seed. The late Dean 
of Manchester — who may be said to be the father of scientific hybridizing — recently 
experimented more for the sake of proving the affinities of certain families of plants, than 
with a view to the production of improved races. Some years ago, there were a few 
lingering hopes entertained, that superfoetation was possible among plants, and in 1837, 
I suggested in the " Gardeners' Magazine," a simple experiment to prove this to be true, and 
which might likewise be of some service in cases of cross-breeding. It was to place pollen 
on one division only of a divided stigma, to see what effect it had on all the ovules in the 
germen. If it was found to fertilise all the ovules, then to apply different pollen to each 
division of a stigma, and thus induce superfcetation. Mr. Herbert took up this point with 
the ardour of youth — he soon ascertained that pollen placed on one division of a stigma, 
fertilised all the ovules in the germen, but he could not make two grains of different pollen 
act on an ovule at the same time, as he tells us in his last paper on this subject in the 
second volume of "The Journal of the Horticultural Society of London." Some years 
since it was firmly believed, that the seedlings from a crossed flower could be altered in their 
constitution, or at least enlarged in their flowers, by a particular mode of managing the 
mother-plant while the seeds were in progress towards maturity, and this belief is still 
entertained by some cultivators, but is not founded on facts. When Mr. Herbert's " Treatise 
on Cross-Breeding" appeared in 1837, some countenance was given in it to this doctrine in 
the case of certain seedling Camellias, which were raised from single ones, and by a 
peculiar way of treating the mother-plant while these seeds were in progress, it was 
supposed to have induced the flowers to become double. From this I dissented at once 
(see " Gardeners' Magazine," xiii. 276) and declared that I could not perceive how any mode 
of management, could affect the offspring subsequent to the impregnation. This led to a 
