82 
THE FLORIST AND POMOLOGIST. 
[ Jdnb, 
and as pure as that of botany. The compre¬ 
hensive survey of nature is his ; the improve¬ 
ment of a few of the units out of his catalogue 
is ours ; and to inquire into the best method of 
doing this may be found to demand scientific 
knowledge as high as that required for the 
more extended field of observation in discrimi¬ 
nating between orders and genera, and the 
resemblances and differences of plants. 
“ Few who had not previously paid attention 
to the subject can have read Mr. Story’s inter¬ 
esting articles on the hybridisation of the Erica 
(Florist, i. 314) without perceiving that, for 
the successful pursuit of that practice, more of 
knowledge, and thought, and judgment, as well 
as of skill and patience, is required than he 
expected ; that less is due to chance, and more 
to system ; that a collection of facts, and a 
comparison of results, are needed ; and arising 
out of this, a suitable variation of method 
according to circumstances; in other words, 
that it demands a scientific adaptation of means 
to produce a desired end. And it will presently 
be my business to show that this desired end 
itself is equally founded on physical facts, and 
reducible to rule; and that the alterations 
sought by florists in the petals and habits of 
certain flowering plants are no more open to 
the objections of the scientific botanist, than 
they are to those which have _ already been 
considered. 
“ Neither is it justly alleged that either the 
end or the means used to attain it are unnatural. 
We are told, for instance, that the many thou¬ 
sand varieties of our Roses are, botanically, the 
same individual under so many thousands of 
fantastic dresses, and none of them natural, or 
conducive to the welfare of the species, or the 
more perfect development of its parts. On the 
contrary, that the greater number of them can 
never perfect their seeds, owing to the produc¬ 
tion of double flowers by the conversion of 
stamens into petals. This might have some 
weight, but that it entirely rests on a fallacy, 
which it is of some importance to notice. The 
Rose was not made for itself nor is its place in 
creation only to produce seeds or to propagate 
its kind. It is a misunderstanding of the 
goodness of the Creator to overlook the fact 
that, like ourselves and every other part of 
God’s works, it was made for others as well as 
itself ; and that one part of its design was, to 
please the eye of the beholder, as of fruits to 
please the palate of the eater. Why, else, the 
otherwise useless enlargement of the petals of 
many, their elegant forms, their varied and 
brilliant colours ? No one can say that any of 
these things minister, except in a small and 
questionable degree, to the welfare of the plant 
or of its seeds, any more than the grateful 
scent of the Mignonette or of the Violet does 
to theirs, or the lusciousness of the drupe of 
the apricot or of the peach does to theirs. 
These additions to the necessary parts of 
fructification were for the sole advantage 
of others ; those that please the eye or the 
smelling seem to have been made for the sole 
pleasure of man, and it appears to have been 
the purpose of God in them to minister to his 
gratification alone. And if some species of 
flowers are found by experience to be capable 
of developing by cultivation greater powers of 
pleasing the eye than are possessed by the un¬ 
cultivated natural specimen, there is nothing 
unnatural in pushing that development as far 
as it will go, and thus bringing forth into light 
the extent to which it was meant to fulfil that 
particular purpose of its creation. 
“ That the arts used for this purpose are not 
unnatural may be seen in the analogous instance 
of cultivated fruits. The apple, for instance, is 
one of those trees ‘ whose seed is in itself.’ 
Around that seed is a fleshy envelope, pleasant 
to the eye, fragrant to the smell, and good for 
food; none of which qualities add to the per¬ 
fection or security of the seed, but are intended 
for the use and gratification of men and animals. 
But this is not so with all the produce of those 
seeds of the tree, or anything like it. Sow the 
seeds, and under the most favourable circum¬ 
stances, not above one in five hundred of the 
plants that spring from them can be expected 
to be worth cultivating for its own fruit. Are 
all the rest, then, useless ? By no means. 
They are for an important purpose, in the 
economy of man’s sustenance from the fruits 
of the field. They undergo (by grafting) an 
operation much more startlingly unnatural, at 
first view, than is the hybridisation of the 
Erica, and the Crabstock is made to sustain the 
bearing wood of choicer kinds instead of its 
own,— 
“ Miraturque novas frondes, et non sua poma 
while the plants that spring from the successful 
seeds become the parents of new varieties, as 
numerous as those of the Ranunculus or the 
Pelargonium. This apparently unnatural pro¬ 
cess is both natural and necessary. And as the 
time when it was first practised is hidden in 
the mists of the remotest antiquity, and as it 
was anciently in use among nations uncon¬ 
nected with each other, and as each ascribed 
the discovery to its founder or to some god, it 
is probable that it was taught of God to our 
first father, when the original curse upon the 
ground and all its productions, for man’s sin, 
made labour the condition of his bread. 
“ This is rendered the more probable by the 
distinct claim made in Isaiah (xxviii. 23-29), 
for the teaching of the art of husbandry to 
man by the Creator,—an art which supplies us 
with a still stronger instance in point than the 
foregoing. 
* “ And wonders at the strange foliage, and fruit 
not its own.” 
