614 
THE GARDENING WORLD. 
May 30tli, 1885. 
SCOTTISH GARDENING. 
Pansies and Violas. —It was about the year 1830 
when Pansies began to be sent out by name in 
Scotland, and they were all what we term Show 
varieties. In 1836 I remember going down to the 
Glen Nurseries (then the late Mr. Handyside’s) to see 
the collection. They were all named, fine in colour, 
and something of the shape of a horse’s head. Colour 
and not form was what was looked to in those days. 
One variety named Pan was an intense black, and a 
light sulphur one was named Tiger’s Face, on account 
of its being veined with black. About 1810 or so 
it was considered essential that a flower to be good 
must have form as well as colour. About this time 
the late Mr. Thomson of Ivor sent out a yellow ground 
flower named Pizarro, and subsequently a light ground 
bloom named Reform. Those two flowers were both 
of fine form, and were the means of letting florists 
see what could be done, and seedling Pansy raisers 
sprang up like mushrooms. At this time Mr. 
Finlayson, of Kincardine, took up the matter in 
earnest, and raised seedlings by the thousand, and at 
first was very successful, but lost himself in the end 
through being too partial to his own sorts. Also 
about this time the late Mr. Tait, of Dickson’s & Co., 
was a very successful raiser, and sent out many fine 
flowers. Mr. Tait believed in crossing his flowers to 
get good seed ; and there is one thing to be said for 
crossed seed, one does not get so much rubbish 
as when the seeds are gathered promiscuously. I 
have raised many seedlings in my day, and done 
much fertilizing, but must confess that some of 
my best flowers were obtained from seed saved pro¬ 
miscuously. 
Fancy Pansies are of a more recent introduction, 
and came most prominently before the public by 
means of a printed list issued in 1862, although they 
had been in existence to a limited extent for a few 
years previously. In 1855 I raised from a Show a 
Fancy variety which I named Dandie Dinmont. It was 
the first of the kind that I had ever seen, and I was 
rather proud of it, though it did not meet with much 
favour among growers at first. The late John Young, who 
was gardener at Archerfield, was a keen Pansy grower, 
and, having to meet him in Edinburgh, I thought it 
would be something of a surprise to him if I took him a 
flower of my Dandy. He looked at it for a little while 
and then threw it at me, saying, “ I wonder a man 
like you would take up your head with a trash of a 
thing hke that.” This was certainly a damper, but it 
didn’t damp me down for long, for in June, 1859, we had 
six varieties of what we called Fancy Pansies. As I was 
going to London to compete with Show Pansies I took 
a stand of these Fancies with me; the stand being 
made to hold thirty I had to put five in each row of the 
same variety. Such flowers had never before been 
seen exhibited, and there was hardly a London 
newspaper which reported the Show that did not 
notice them. That was the beginning of the Fancy 
Pansies, and I am pleased to say there is not a more 
popular flower at the present day. 
Violas are now a very useful and interesting class of 
plants, and it is to Messrs. Dickson & Co. that we are 
indebted in a great measure for bringing them so pro¬ 
minently before the public in years gone by. They, 
would be sadly missed in our flower gardens nowadays, 
for by a careful selection of the varieties they can be had 
in bloom for eight months in the year. About eight 
years ago it struck me that it might be possible by 
careful crossing to make the Violas something like 
the Fancy Pansies, and I set to work by crossing the 
large varieties with such sorts as Magpie, &c., and 
succeeded in raising a very fine variety named 
Countess of Kintore, a large, bold purple flower, with 
a pure white edging. I have raised some thousands 
of seedlings since, but, strange to say, I have never 
been able to obtain any advance on the Countess 
of Kintore, which is sti one of the most popular 
Violas of the day.— John Bownie, Murray field, Mid¬ 
lothian. 
Fruit Prospects in the Cause of Gowrie. —The 
seasons for several years back have been so fickle, 
and prices for fruit have been so fluctuating, that 
many horticulturists have joined in the general cry 
with agriculturists about the great deterioration of 
our climate, and say that fruit cannot be grown now as 
was the case in “ the good old times.” Though it is 
true that we have had cold summers of recent years, 
and that prices may not have been great, we are not 
prepared to join in the general wail about climatic 
deterioration. The past summer was remarkably 
sunny, and the autumn months particularly fine, 
hence the reason of our fruit-trees and bushes having 
so much well-ripened wood at present. 
A writer in Forestry who has examined a 
goodly number of orchards and gardens in the 
Carse states that he has seldom seen them 
give greater promise — the flower-buds are so 
numerous and well-developed. “ We would take 
the liberty of recommending farmers and others, 
who have orchards or gardens that may not 
have been too well attended to in past years, to 
give them a good top-dressing of well-rotted manure, 
and they will find both flower and fruit all the better 
for it. We give this advice all the more readily 
because we know very many of the Carse orchards 
have been sadly neglected of late, and almost allowed 
to run to waste; little or nothing being done in the 
way of pruning or manuring. We .are glad, however, 
to learn that a change for the better has commenced. 
Some of our more enterprising landlords, as well as 
some farmers who have orchards, have been pruning 
very extensively, and also adding greatly to their stock 
of trees as well as bushes. Some of our professional 
gardeners, as well as amateurs, have been talcing a 
lesson from our farmers, and using fish manure in 
the hope of doing something grand at our local 
shows. 
“ We know one gardener who was using it largely 
in a plot of Gooseberries; he said to us, in his own 
hopeful but expressive way, that he expected to be 
able to let us see some ‘ snorers ’ at the show this 
year. Every success to him in this, which, beyond 
every other pursuit, unites real pleasure with profit.” 
Plants in Flower at Melville Castle.— That 
beautiful Australian shrub, Prostanthera lasianthos, 
which, though introduced early in the present 
century, is now very rarely seen, has lately been 
flowering grandly at Melville Castle, Lasswade, the 
seat of Viscount Melville. Mr. George McKinnon, 
who grows hard-wooded plants well, has two hand¬ 
some plants, about 3 ft. each in diameter, which have 
yielded an abundant crop of pale purplish-lilac labiate 
flowers, produced in terminal clusters, and presenting 
a most imposing appearance. Mr. Green, when at 
Pendell Court, used also to do this plant well, but 
it is not nearly so often seen in gardens as its merits 
deserve ; and we should be glad if Mr. McKinnon 
would give us a few hints on its cultivation, with a 
view to inducing others to grow it. The Heaths at 
Melville Castle are also now in full bloom, amongst 
them being a couple of good examples of E. Spencer - 
iana, a number of E. ventricosa, and a plant of 
E. Cavendishiana, 4 ft. through, with spikes of yellow 
blossoms 12 ins. long. 
HYBRIDIZATION OF ORCHIDS. 
{Paper read by Mr. H. J. Veitcli, F.L.S., at the Orchid 
Conference, Wednesday, May 13th.) 
In a communication “ On Hybridization among 
Vegetables,” by Dean Herbert, of Manchester, pub¬ 
lished in 1847, in the second volume of The Journal 
of the Horticultural Society of London, I find the 
following remarkable passage :— 
“ Cross-breeding amongst orchidaceous plants would, 
perhaps, lead to very startling results; but, unfor¬ 
tunately, they are not easily raised from seed. I have, 
however, raisedBletia, Cattleya,Herminiummonorchis, 
and Ophrys aranifera from seed; and if I were not, 
during the greater part of the year, absent from the 
place where my plants are deposited, I think I could 
succeed in obtaining crosses in that order. I had well 
formed pods last spring of Orchis by pollen of Ophrys, 
as well as of other species of Orchis which had been 
forced ; and, if I had remained on the spot, I think I 
should have obtained some cross-bred orchidaceous 
seed. An intelligent gardener may do much for 
science by attempts of this kind, if he keeps accurate 
notes of what he attempts, and does not jump at 
immature conclusions.” 
This is the earliest authentic information I have 
been able to obtain of attempts to raise new forms 
among Orchids by cross-breeding, and with what 
success the Dean himself has told us in his own words. 
At that time, and for some years afterwards, there 
was a prevalent notion among gardeners that muling 
among Orchids was an impossibility, and, so far as I am 
aware, no one attempted it besides Dean Herbert till 
it was taken up by Dominy, at our Exeter nursery, 
about the year 1853. The cause of the prevalent 
belief of that age in the impossibility of hybridization 
among Orchids is not, I think, far to seek. 
Dean Herbert was a man of science, and was well 
acquainted with the structure of Orchid flowers; to 
him their fertilization by hand presented no difficulty; 
to horticulturists and gardeners it was quite different; 
not only had they, in common with many others, 
not the slightest suspicion of the fertilization of 
Orchids by insect agency, but, moreover, very few of 
them possessed even an elementary knowledge of 
botany. They could, it is true, distinguish accurately 
the stamens and pistils of many flowers familiar to 
them, and they were aware of the functions of those 
organs, but the confluence of those organs into the 
solid column of an Orchid flower was to them a 
profound mystery. It was unfortunate, too, that Dean 
Herbert’s injunction to keep accurate notes of what 
was attempted was not followed in the early days 
of Orchid hybridization, whence the uncertainty 
that still hangs over the parentage of some of the 
earlier acquisitions. 
It was Mr. John Harris, a surgeon of Exeter, who 
suggested to Dominy the possibility of muling Orchids, 
and who pointed out to him the reproductive organ 
seated in the column, and showed that the application 
of the pollinia to the stygmatic surface was analagous 
to the dusting of the stigma of other flowers with 
pollen. This simple fact being once fairly grasped, 
the work of hybridization proceeded apace. The 
flowers of showy species of Cattleya, Ltelia, Calanthe, 
&c., were fertilized with the pollinia of other species, 
and even the flowers of supposed different, but of 
course allied, genera were also operated upon in the 
same way. Capsules were produced in abundance, 
which in due course proved them maturity by dehiscing 
and thus the long and anxiously desired seed was at 
length at hand. Then arose a great difficulty, a 
difficulty which still exists, and which our long 
experience has enabled us to make only a short step 
towards overcoming—to discover the most suitable 
method of raising seedlings and getting them 
established. The seeds of Orchids are minute chaffy 
bodies of extreme lightness. So minute are they 
that an ordinary pocket lense is powerless to enable 
one to know whether the seeds are likely to contain a 
germ or are mere lifeless dust. When growing wild 
it is evident that the contents of the mature capsules 
after dehiscence are more_ or less scattered by the 
wind, perhaps wafted to great distances, until they 
settle on the branches of trees, on shelving rocks, or 
other suitable situations where the seeds can germinate 
and the seedlings firmly affix themselves. Following, 
or at least believing, that we were following Nature so 
far as the altered circumstances of artificial cultivation 
allowed, every method or available means that could 
be thought of was brought into request to secure the 
germination of the seed. It was sown upon blocks 
of wood, pieces of tree-fern stem, strips of cork, upon 
the moss that surfaced the pots of the growing plants, 
in fact, in any situation that seemed to promise 
favourable results. But as it was in the early days 
of Orchid hybridization, so it is now, we seem as far 
off as ever from hitting upon a method by which at 
least a moderate amount of success may be calculated 
upon; failures were at first, as now, innumerable, 
and numberless such are without doubt inevitable. 
Among the most cogent causes of failure in the raising of 
seedling Orchids, there can be no doubt that the altered 
conditions of climate, especially the deficiency of 
sunlight, and the artificial treatment to which the 
plants are necessarily subject in the glass houses of 
Europe, are the greatest. The capsules neither can 
nor do attain the perfection natural to them in their 
native countries, and it is more than probable that, 
independently of the capsules grown in our houses 
being the production of cross-breeding, they do not 
yield a fractional part of the quantity of good seed 
they would do in their native land. And so with 
their progeny—the tender seedlings are brought into 
