July 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
211 
air, till, at last, the glass may he left off altogether 
during the night, and kept only partially over them 
through the day. A good deal will be gained by 
strict attention to these simple rules; because, the 
more hardy cuttings are brought up, the more firm 
and stocky the plants will turn out, and be the easier 
to pass through our long winters. It can never he 
too much insisted on, that cuttings and seedlings 
reared in the autumn should be got ready as hardy 
as the state of the weather will permit, whereas those 
propagated in the spring, having the whole summer 
before them, need not be so particularly nursed. 
This is a good time to put in cuttings of tea- 
scented roses, which are so beautiful in pots; and if 
taken up by the end of September and placed five or 
six in a pot, to be wintered in a cold pit, as they do 
not stand the frost well at this age, they would be in 
good order to be singly potted next spring, or, what 
would be better, planted out for another season in a 
nursery bed full of very rich soil. Some people say 
they would do better in very rotten dung altogether 
at this stage, provided the bottom be dry; and, prob¬ 
ably, this may be right enough; at any rate, we know 
the nursing bed for all young roses can never be too 
rich: and if we were to say for their soil one-third 
very rotten dung, one-third leaf-mould, and one- 
third turfy, good loam, we should not be far from 
the mark. If this bed was made 18 inches thick, 
over a dry bottom, and in a sunny sheltered situa¬ 
tion, we might get tea-scented roses large enough 
in one season to be potted for exhibition. 
Crassulas. —This is also a proper time to put in 
cuttings of crassulas to flower this time next year on 
single stems. Select for this purpose the strongest 
shoots that have borne no flowers this season. 
These being always the best when they can be pro¬ 
cured. Cut them four or five inches from the top, 
and strip off the leaves an inch or so at the bottom, 
and when the cut is dried over, after a few hours, 
put them into pots of nothing else but sand—But 
they would root in any thing. A window, or a shelf 
in a greenhouse, is the best place for them to make 
roots, and they require very little water. I have 
even seen them flower most gorgeously in nothing 
but pure sand, and also in half sand and half peat, 
and I have seen them in the very richest composts. 
We grow them here very largely, and make flower 
beds of them. The compost we use for potting them 
is yellow loam, and one-third pounded soft bricks, 
using dust and all; but I must have a regular 
chapter on them some of these days, as they are as 
easily kept and finer than the best cactus. 
Hybridization. —When I began noting down a few 
stray thoughts on crossing, I had no idea the subject 
would have attracted such attention. I have had 
since to give several verbal lectures to friends and 
neighbours, and I have even been requested to write 
about crossing wheat and barley, and other grain 
crops, as if farmers have not had enough of crossing 
and recrossing amongst all their crops of late years. 
All that I have room for to-day, however, is to explain 
to a worthy man ( J. D.) how the iris is crossed. He 
says, “ I cannot find out, after dissecting a good 
number of flowers, where the pistilum is to be found. 
The anthers seem to be situated upon the seed ves¬ 
sel, and entirely to close over the top of it, so as to 
prevent the possibility of fertilizing; yet, of course, 
this cannot be, for the iris bears seed freely with 
me.” This has always been the case. The iris is a 
puzzle peg to all young beginners in cross-breeding, 
and yet this morning a clever young gardener who 
called here found out thishnystery, for the first time, 
in my presence, after failing to unravel that of the 
“ blue bells of Scotland,” or, as the old song has it, 
“ my own blue bells.” The anthers in the iris are 
always three in each flower, and, in appearance, do 
not differ from those of the gladiolus and most flow¬ 
ers. They are inserted, not as J. B. supposed “upon 
the seed vessels,” but into the bottom of the sepals, 
or the three large petals which hang down. The 
true petals are much smaller than these sepals, and 
stand always erect. Now, if you hold an iris flower 
in your hand, and follow me, we shall soon make the 
thing plain enough. You see the three sepals branch 
out, in an arch-like form, between the erect petals, 
and then spreading out into a broad limb, which 
hangs more or less down; take hold of this broad 
part of the sepal and pull it down flat against the 
seed vessel, when you will see the stamen inserted 
at the bottom of it, holding up the anther in a bent 
form under an arched something, between a petal 
and a sepal. There are three of these arched things, 
one over each anther. Now, pull off the broad se¬ 
pals, leaving the stamens under this arched process, 
and then you have three erect petals with these 
arched things coming out between them, and, as 
botanists say, are incumbent on and over the sta¬ 
mens and anthers, which fit into the form of the 
arch completely. If we recollect that in the iris 
tribe the pistils are always found at the back of the 
anthers, we shall have no difficulty in comprehend¬ 
ing these arched bodies to be the true pistils, as, in 
reality, they are. This form of the pistil is called 
petabid, that is, something in form of a petal, or 
nearly so. The style in our iris divides at the upper 
end into two wings, and just between these wings, 
and opposite the top of the anther, is a thin trans¬ 
parent membrane, which is the real stigma, having 
the clammy surface on the upper side, or that far¬ 
thest off from the anther. By cutting out the an¬ 
thers before they burst, and by applying the pollen 
from another flower to the upper surface of this thin 
membrane, a cross may easily be effected, much 
easier, indeed—now that we know the parts—than 
in many other flowers of a more simple form, as 
here we have nothing to cut away to get at the true 
stigma. Let us finish our dissection by carefully 
cutting out the stamens and the erect petals. The 
sepals we have already torn off, taking care not to 
disturb the three arched pistils, only taking off' the 
ring, or tube, to which the sepals, petals, and sta¬ 
mens were joined; and now we have only the seed 
vessel, with these three arched styles fixed to the top 
of it, as all styles are. If we look carefully, we shall 
find that there is only one style after all; the short 
column between the top of the seed vessel and the 
bottom of the arched branches is the true style, and is 
branched into three petaloid divisions. In the gera¬ 
niums, the style branches into five of these divisions 
and, if each of these was also of a petaloid form, 
what a strange flower they would make ! When the 
bees are looking for the honey in the flower ol an 
iris, they cannot easily disturb the pollen, or dust it 
on the film of this kind of stigma, so that those end¬ 
less varieties we see in the bulbous irises are pro¬ 
duced by the wind shaking off the pollen from the 
different flowers; the pollen of the iris, and ot many 
other kinds of plants, being almost as subtle as elec¬ 
tricity itself. Therefore, it is very essential that all 
flowers should be cut off from an iris plant, or bed, 
except those operated upon, while the experiment is 
in progress. I have no room to-day to give the rea¬ 
son why my friend coidd not make out the dusting 
of the bcll-ilowers, or campanulas. 
