14 G 
AM AltYLLIDACE.E. 
I stated that after many years attention to their cultivation, 
I had never seen the slightest variation, and that it would not 
seem more improbable to me that a fowl should sometimes 
lay a duck’s egg, or gooseberry bushes produce peaches, 
which I fear was too lightly expressed, and may have given 
unintentional offence. After fifteen years additional expe- 
rience and constant attention to this natural order, I can re- 
assert that I have seen no such variability, and that the 
notion that Crinum Capense sometimes bore flat black shelly 
seeds was certainly founded on erroneous information. The 
seed of Hippeastrum has an outer black foliaceous separable 
integument, which after the decay of the seed will lie under 
ground for years without perishing. It has an inner brown 
coat adhering more closely to the almond-like albumen in 
which the embryo lies with the point directed to the orifice. 
Seeds of Crinum and Amaryllis, which Mr. Salisbury 
used to call albuminous, very improperly, since they seem 
to contain no real albumen, have the outer coat soft and in- 
separable from a fleshy mass which is the middle or fleshy 
coat (in Hippeastrum quite dried up and obsolete), and the 
inner coat is not separable from it ; within lies the embryo, 
usually (I believe always) without any albuminous bed. I 
have opened hundreds of Crinum and Hymenocallis seeds 
without discovering any, but I have not had the same fre- 
quent opportunities of cutting through those of Amaryllis. 
There is no instance in the order of such fleshy seeds being 
produced by a plant with a hollow scape. I was deceived, 
when I published the appendix, by a little diversity in the 
seed of Hippeastrum reticulatum and the variety Striatifolium, 
to believe that they constituted a separate genus. The con- 
trary was soon proved by their producing fertile crosses with 
the other species, and 1 have them now blended with Auli- 
cum, regio-vittatum, pulverulentum, See. and breeding again 
freely with any species or variety. On re-examination of the 
seed it appeared that there was no substantial difference, but 
that the seeds of reticulatum are few, and therefore rounder 
and not flattened by compression ; the inside of its capsule is 
remarkable by its orange colour, but this disappears in the 
first cross, as well as the roundness of the seeds, while the 
white stripe of striatifolium endures through many successive 
alliances. My attention having been kindly called to the 
difference between the seed of Iris foetida and other species, 
with a view to the soundness of the principle on which I build, 
