June 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
143 
well managed, tlieir best dowers, winch will he 
injured much, and the blooming season shortened, if 
exposed to the weather of our variable climate. 
Shelter from rain, wind, and a too powerful sun, 
must be put into practice. This is a good time to in¬ 
crease them, either by layers or cuttings. Directions 
for these operations have been given at page 47 of 
vol. i. 
Pinks. —Thin the flower-buds to three or four to 
each stem. The buds will now be advancing towards 
expansion. Some kinds, and good ones too, are apt 
to burst the pod on one side, and so produce a one¬ 
sided, imperfect flower. To prevent this, tie round 
each bud you wish to bloom in perfection a piece of 
soft bass-matting, or, which is far better, have some 
Indian-rubber rings of the proper size placed round 
the bulbs. If you observe any of the flowers still 
inclined to open irregularly, take either a sharp knife 
or a pair of small pointed scissors, and open the 
divisions of the calyx, or green flower cup, so far as 
you judge sufficient to enable the flower to expand 
equally on every side. Continue to increase the 
pink by pipings, as directed in the last Number. 
Dahlias. —Finish planting, if not already done. 
Seedlings ought now to be so forward as to be fit to 
transplant into rows in the open air. They may be 
planted rather thickly—that is, let the rows be from 
two to three feet apart, and the plants one foot 
to eighteen inches in the row. When they are in 
flower, select those that have good properties, and 
pull up those that are decidedly bad. By good pro¬ 
perties we mean such as are perfectly double, w r itli 
the centre well up, with a round form, each petal or 
flower-leaf rather cupped, the lowest petals projecting 
a little beyond the next tier, and the second row of 
petals a little beyond the third, and so on up to the 
centre, which should be full, but not so much so as 
to prevent them expanding: no eye, or anthers, 
should be visible. Possessing these properties, with 
clear bright colours, and a good size, your seedling 
will be worth preserving. T. Appleby. 
GREENHOUSE AND WINDOW 
GARDENING. 
Hybpjdizing. — In my last letter I said that I 
never attempted to cross-breed roses, but that I 
would try a few experiments hi order to enable me 
to explain the process more simply in this article. 
I have now done so, and I may safely affirm that 
had it not been for this anxiety to dish up a nice 
story for The Cottage Gardener, I should have 
lost one of the greatest treats I have experienced for 
many years in the examination of flowers. If I have 
cut up one flower, I am within the mark in saying 
that I have dissected many thousands, and out of 
that number I do not recoUect of having met with a 
single instance where the interior of the young seed 
vessel was so arranged as in the rose, and I was not 
aware that such conformation as there presented 
itself was to be met with in the whole vegetable 
kingdom; but more of this another time. Every 
scliool-boy may be said to possess a certain know¬ 
ledge of comparative anatomy as soon as he is able, 
in liis own way, to dissect pomologicallij, if there is 
such a word, and compare on his palato the differ¬ 
ences which exist between a strawberry and a cherry; 
a fact which I learned from the first botanist of this 
age, who, on his way to place two of his sons at a 
celebrated academy, called in to see a rare collection 
of plants then under my charge, and after seeing all 
the “ new things,” the conversation, naturally enough, 
turned upon botany, and amongst other questions I 
asked him it' the two young students were likely to 
turn out “ chips of the old block?” “ Why, yes,” he 
replied, adjusting his spectacles, “ both of them have 
already acquired the most essential point reqidsite 
for an expert botanist; for,” he continued, speaking 
botanically, “each of them has a good practical 
knowledge of comparative anatomy;” meaning, no 
doubt, that they made some proficiency in cracking 
nuts, eating apples, sucking peaches, and all that 
sort of anatomy. Our knowledge of flowers, and of 
the incipient fruit which accompany them, must be 
limited indeed without some process of anatomy, if 
only to split a rose into two or four parts with a 
common knife, as I did the other night. A hybri¬ 
dizer may cross and re-cross bis flowers till dooms¬ 
day, but, unless he makes himself familiar with the 
different parts which compose a flower, their various 
arrangements, and the functions allotted to each, he 
is deprived of half the pleasure and interest which 
the subject never fails to impart. Therefore, this 
involves a certain, smattering of botany, the slightest 
knowledge of which would also add to the zest of 
dissecting a flower for the first time. 
Now, with only the most superficial knowledge of 
these things, I began last week to dissect flowers of 
the various sections of the rose, from the single wild 
brier, through the various stages of semi-double 
flowers, on to double and the most double ones. 
From this summit I descended on the opposite side 
through all the gradations of that malady which we 
call “ green eyes,” or centres. I had eleven flowers in 
all, and most of them I had to split into four parts, 
and after two hours’ examination and comparison of 
all the parts, although, as I have said already, I 
never crossed or opened a single rose before, unless 
I can shew you how best to go to work at once with 
them, I shall engage to forfeit my nationality, the 
severest punishment a highlander can undergo, and 
get through it with a safe neck. I believe I liave 
read the substance of all that has been published on 
the subject of morphology—a science of recent birth, 
and which explains the nature of vegetable mon¬ 
strosities, of which the green centre in a rose flower 
is a sad but familiar instance—and from all this 
reading I did not obtain so clear a view of this new 
doctrine as from the dissections of which I am now 
writing. 
Procure a quantity of green-centred roses to¬ 
morrow ; let them be in different stages of transfor¬ 
mation, from the changing of the pistil to a rough 
grey surface, up to the full development of a green 
leaf; cut them into four pieces, and unravel the pistils 
one by one from the central mass in which they are 
all jammed together; compare these in all their stages 
with the perfect pistils in the centre of a single rose, 
and you may gain a tolerable insight of tbe rudiments 
of morphology, and you may see in reality a more 
strange metamorphosis of parts, and their progress 
in the transition state, than the rich mythology of 
Greece supplied to the pliant quill of Ovid. The 
fact before you of a lady of the bedchamber, or a 
maid of honour to the queen of flowers, being trans¬ 
formed into a green-eyed Susan, or to a perfect rose- 
leaf, is even more singular, though not so sad, than 
that of the lovely Tliisbe being turned into a mul¬ 
berry-tree after her tragical end with Pyramus, her 
unhappy lover, whose fates every schoolboy has sin¬ 
cerely and most affectionately lamented. 
Now procure a single rose, the blossom of a wild 
brier will do, and let us examine the parts in succes- 
