HYBRID INTERMIXTURES. 
357 
certain species a great disposition to intermix and sport, 
which was occasioned by the accidental transmission of the 
pollen from one plant to another by the bees, which occurs 
perpetually in that genus, because many of its flowers are 
occasionally without anthers, or lose them before the stigma 
comes to maturity, which causes them to be fertilized by 
another flower; and in the year 1812 (taking the date from 
Sweet’s Hortus Britannicus) the beautiful cross between Pe- 
largonium Citronodorum and fulgidum was obtained from 
seed, and afterwards produced under the name ignescens ; 
and, being fertile, it has become the parent of an innumer- 
able variety of the most beautiful plants that adorn our green- 
houses. P. ardens had been raised two years before between 
fulgidum and lobatum, and had first pointed out to cultiva- 
tors that it was possible, through the pollen of P. fulgidum, 
to introduce its brilliant tint of scarlet under a variety of 
modifications, in union with the superior qualities of other 
species in which it was deficient ; but a long course of expe- 
riments has shewn the impracticability of blending the plants 
allied to zonale (which are properly detached by Mr. Sweet 
under the name Ciconia) with the true Pelargoniums, which 
are however certainly of one genus with the bulbous rooted 
sorts that are found to interbreed with them, and have been 
improperly detached. Such plants as fulgidum and echi- 
natum, which have a stem of a semi-tuberous nature and 
capable of enduring a long period of drought, form a curious 
link between the tuberous and fibrous-rooted species. The 
practicability of obtaining a cross between the hardy Passi- 
flora coerulea and its more splendid but tenderer congeners 
had been suggested in my communication to the Horticul- 
tural Society ; and not long after Mr. Milne verified the 
suggestion by the production of three fine varieties by seed 
from the scarlet racemosa fertilized by coerulea. These 
mules, though not absolutely sterile, are indisposed to fruit, 
but seedlings were obtained from them by Mr. Milne, which 
are approximated more in colour to the male parent coerulea, 
and laboured under a suspicion on that account of having 
been the fruit of a second cross by coerulea, which was flower- 
ing in the immediate vicinity. Some time after a solitary 
fruit was borne by one of Mr. Milne’s plants in the conser- 
vatory at Spofforth, and although there certainly was a plant 
of coerulea in another greenhouse in the garden, at a consi- 
derable distance from the plant, there was no probability of 
