13S 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER AND COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, PECEvtBEE 6, 1859. 
of improvement within tlie circle, as in breeding in-and- 
in, until such time as the new strain is itself brought 
within the same unvarying round. 
The Fancies and the French-spotted Pelargoniums are 
two recent instances of the truth of this axiom. Both 
were new strains from a different pollen parent; and if all 
other Pelargoniums were sent out of the world as soon as | 
one or both of these strains were introduced, people | 
would have to wait one generation of florists before these j 
two races, or either of them, would be as far up to the ; 
mark as the old Pelargoniums were when these two races 
made their appearance. But the old and improved race 
of the Pelargoniums, by breeding in-and-in, has not only 
not disappeared, but is now fast drawing the new rivals 
into the very same circle as itself. If Tom Thumb or a 
new kind from any section of the family from the Cape 
of Good Hope could be got to cross now with the Pelar¬ 
gonium as it is, the offspring would not be an improve¬ 
ment in the eyes of a florist—only a stopping-stage, like 
those made by the Fancies and Spotted breed. But to 
show how taste differs from a fixed law, we have had the 
great bulk of our people in raptures at the “ improved 
looks ” of the French and Fancy breeds, while the florist 
looked upon them as stopping-points in the progress of 
his care and calling. 
The Dahlia—that is, the improved Dahlia of the present 
day, is the best example in our book of the force of the 
liberty-law to sport and vary in opposition to the law of j 
crossing to get into more variation. The pollen has no 
more influence on Dahlias than on Primroses. Take any 
one, and only one of our cultivated Dahlias or Primroses | 
and Polyanthuses to a new country^or island where none j 
of the kinds were ever seen, breed each kind on its own J 
bottom ; and sooner than any one unacquainted with the 
fact could believe, each kind would be out into as many 
kinds and varieties as almost the old country could pro¬ 
duce. When the law of crossing came to be first mooted 
and understood in this country may have been the time 
when so many single and double Polyanthuses went out 
of cultivation. Trusting to the superiority of cross¬ 
breeding, a superior race was expected from it in all 
instances ; and some of the races that were had from the 
older law of liberty to sport were let out of cultivation, 
in the anticipation-period of better things. At least, 
that is as good a way of accounting for the loss of older 
kinds as any other, and the best way of doing so under ! 
the object 1 have in view just now, which is to point out j 
the impracticability of improving by cross-breeding any ' 
one race oY flowers that has hitherto been operated upon, 
if the parent plants are such as sport from seeds of their 
own free will, as it were 
There is another seeming law against the improvement 
of races by new blood, or pollen ; and that law seems to 
begin as soon as a wild plant is subdued by improved 
cultivation, so as to be able to sport by seeds into some 
improved forms on its wild nature. All the host of Cow¬ 
slips, Oxlips, Polyanthuses, and Primroses, came origi¬ 
nally from one pod of seeds of one of themselves ; but if 
you are of a different opinion, have your own way, it makes 
no difference for my present object. Say there was one 
kind of Primrose, one kind of Cowslip, and one kind of 
Polyanthus to begin with, my argument is this, that any 
of the four would cross with one of the rest at the be¬ 
ginning ; but when the race became fixed and bred in its j 
own strain only for so often, or so many years, the last ; 
offspring will not cross with any of the other three kinds, j 
supposing them to be still in their original wildings, and ' 
much more difEcult would it be to cross improved seed¬ 
lings from any of them. 
It has often been pointed out to me by ladies, and by 
some gentlemen who go almost as far as most ladies in 
their ideas of high-art improvement, that it would be a 
very desirable result to get our buds of Polyanthus and 
Primrose to cross with the Chinese Primula; and so it 
would, most undoubtedly. When I first saw the original 
single red China Primrose in bloom was in 1824; I was 
then very deep, but, in truth very shallow, in the 
mysteries of cross-breeding. I w r as full of it, however, 
up to the armpits—at any rate, the Chinese Primula was 
then quite new in Scotland, and only a few years in Lon¬ 
don itself; and it took just twenty years’ cultivation in a 
new country, new soil, climate, and mode of cultivation, 
to alter that pale pink Primrose to a double flower. If 
we had the original of the Chinese plant, and the type 
plant from which our own Primroses and Polyanthuses 
first sprang, it is hard to say that they would not cross 
and provide a new strain for us; but assuredly the 
present races from. these originals will not interbreed by 
the help of our present knowledge of the laws of cross¬ 
breeding. 
The first double Chinese Primrose was in the market 
about the time Queen Yictoria succeeded to the British 
crown. The double red was then selling at one guinea 
each, and the double white at just three times that amount. 
I myself paid three guineas for it to Mr. John Hender¬ 
son, of the Pine-Apple Place Nursery, in 1836. For 
some years it kept at the same distance in price from 
the pink double kind—and I was more lucky with it than 
others of the London growers, for I had it to spare, both 
to Mr. Henderson, and to Mr. Low, of Clapton, in ex¬ 
change for other novelties : still the white one was found 
to be the more difficult to keep and to propagate. Now, 
however, and for some years past, the tables have turned 
over them, and the white is the more common of the 
two ; and the French white, or fringed kind, which first 
appeared in the Kingston Nursery here, is the best of 
the race of double ones. About the time of the first 
China war and Sir Henry Pottinger, these double 
Chinese Primroses got sadly behind about London. They 
were scarce, dear, and badly grown : whether that was 
owing to our foreign policy or not I cannot say, but the 
fact is patent to this day. About that time, or shortly 
afterwards, Mr. Latter, of Ipswich, and the gardener of 
General Anderson, at Bath, succeeded in growing them 
so much superior to the London run, that they became 
the talk of the gardening world. Sir W. Middleton used 
then to reside in Bath a few of the winter and early 
spring months, and often wrote to me to give the full 
size and extent of General Anderson’s Primulas. On the 
other hand, Mr. Latter was in the habit of sending me 
yearly batches of cut flowers of his improved seedlings, 
and of his superior way of growing the plants ; and round 
Ipswich they stood in the scale as in the next degree to 
Cucumbers, to test what was in the spirit of gardening to 
make a man celebrated in their successful cultivation. 
When I came back to London in 1857, and found the 
growth of these Primulas not a whit more forward than 
it was at the taking possession of the island of Chusan 
by the English, I began to turn over a new leaf, railed 
at them for their want of pluck and what not—so much 
so as to arouse the British lion within them, and to haunt 
them like the nightmare in their dreams. They could 
not stand it, or resist another effort which soon eclipsed 
both Ipswich and Bath, with the rest of these parts of 
the world besides. The Londoners are now the best 
growers of the Chinese Primulas in the w orld ; and King¬ 
ston stands first in the order of merit of all the London 
districts in this revival. It is, therefore, no presumption 
on the part of the historian, but an act of real charity 
for me to detail the Kingston practice for the use and 
benefit of the people of Bath and Ipswich generally, and 
to Mr. Wild, of the Primulaceae, Ipswich, in particular, 
in return for their successful endeavours to keep alive 
the notion of growing them well, when the knowledge of 
doing so was fast failing about London. 
Besides, the best letter that ever passed through the 
office of The Cottage Gabdener was just on this very sub¬ 
ject last week. But here it is in full, and judge between us. 
“ Something about double Chinese Primroses, when con¬ 
venient —A Country Subscriber,” and not another scratch. 
