HYBRID INTERMIXTURES. 
363 
an easy opportunity of improvement, by intermixing the 
fragrant and more vigorous with the yellow and the scarlet. 
Fruit has been grown at Spofforth from the common garden 
honeysuckle by Fraser’s scarlet, but it was plundered, when 
on the point of ripening, by robins. I have plants which I 
have raised from an early pale honeysuckle crossed with 
hirsutum, and with flavum. The French have favoured us 
with some desirable magnolias from M. Yulan, fertilized by 
obovata and gracilis, but the admixture of the Chinese 
species with the magnificent grandiflora, and with the very 
hardy tripetala is probably still in expectation. One of the 
most interesting genera, on which the process of intermix- 
ture has been successfully attempted, is that of Calceolaria, 
because it embraces plants of a decidedly shrubby and ten- 
der habit, and others which are completely stemless, and 
capable of retiring to rest under ground in the temperature 
of a British winter, and colours very dissimilar, the yellow 
and the brownish purple ; and because most of the numerous 
species which have been imported appear to intermix with 
the greatest readiness, producing an endless variety of 
forms. The natural effect of crossing a yellow with a pur- 
ple flower should be to produce various shades passing from 
the intermediate coppery tinge to the two extremities of 
purple and yellow, and such is the case in the mixtures 
between arachnoeides and the different varieties of integri- 
folia; but the cultivators of this genus were surprised by the 
breaking of the intermixture of the purple arachnoeides 
with Corymbosa, which has some purple specks on the 
corolla, so as to produce yellow flowers, broadly blotched 
with dark and even blackish purple ; but the subsequent dis- 
covery of a Chilian biennial species which has not yet been 
figured, and which I call C. discolor, blotched with a red- 
dish purple in a manner somewhat similar, shewed that such 
an arrangement of colour was a natural variation of the 
genus, which the cultivator might therefore have expected, 
if all the natural species thereof had been previously brought 
to his knowledge. C. integrifolia in all its varieties, includ- 
ing the closely allied viscosa, is a woody shrub, attaining, if 
protected, the height of several feet (I have had viscosa ten 
feet high), but incapable of resisting many degrees of frost, 
while C. plantaginea is absolutely stemless, and so hardy, 
that although it loses its leaves in the open border, and dis- 
appears in the winter out of doors, yet even in the north of 
