IS 7 2. ] 
CULTURE OF NEPENTHES. 
53 
aided by careful notation and observation, saving no seed but that which I am 
almost certain has been the result of artificial fertilization, I am satisfied if I 
obtain (in the flowering section) an average of one good variety out of four 
hundred seedlings, and five or six fair varieties an advance upon their parents ; 
and in the tricolor section the proportion is much less, more like one in a thou¬ 
sand ; this is what would be expected from the disadvantage the pollen parent 
labours under. 
Having remarked upon the smallness of the proportion of really good and 
novel varieties obtainable from a given number of seedlings, making it appear to 
be somewhat a matter of selection after all one’s pains and trouble, I am (for 
the encouragement of careful artificial fertilization) bound to give the other side of 
the picture for comparison, by showing the result of seedlings produced without 
the aid of thought and judgment. I saw last summer a bed containing several 
thousand seedlings in flower; the seed from which they were raised had been 
saved from the best varieties, but it was the result of self or insect fertilization , 
and the whole bed did not contain one single plant worth selecting. I would, 
moreover, conclude by quoting a passage from Darwin’s book, On the Origin of 
Species :— c ‘ One new variety raised by man will be a more important and in¬ 
teresting subject for study, than one more species added to the infinitude of 
already recorded species.”— John Denny, Stoke Newington. 
CULTURE OF NEPENTHES. 
XCEPTING it be owing to the fact that the species of Nepenthes are 
somewhat expensive to buy, and require besides a comparatively high 
temperature to grow them successfully, it would be difficult to explain 
why so interesting and beautiful a group of plants is not more generally 
cultivated. The more striking species, moreover, while young, furnish some of the 
most elegant of basket-plants, for when grown in that way the pendent pitchers 
have an exceedingly graceful appearance. The interest attaching to the first known 
species, N. distillatoria , has been subsequently extended by the acquisition of N. 
ampullacea , N. Rafflesiana, N. Hookeriana , N. phyllamphora, N. Icevis , &c., and later 
still by that of N. villosa and N. sanguinea ; besides which some very useful 
hybrids have been obtained at that genial place for exotic crosses, the Messrs. 
Yeitch’s nurseries at Chelsea. Of one of these fine hybrids, N. Sedem , a figure 
is appended. Other still finer species than the above-named, as N. Lown , 
N. Rajah , N. Edwardsiana , &c., remain to be introduced. 
Our older tutor scribes gravely inform us that the Nepenthes can only be grown 
successfully with the roots plunged in bottom-heat, but this 1 have, from personal 
experience, proved to be unnecessary to a possible and less costly system of cul¬ 
ture ; for I have grown them with the base of the pot containing their roots, 
placed upon inverted pots, just so that the water in an ordinary cool tank touched 
their base, and so afforded intermittently a supply of moisture. This, however, 
was allowed during the summer or growing season onl} 7 , the pots being elevated 
