The garden Cinerarias are sporting plants as much as the Dahlia, yet among a thousand seedlings of each, one may turn up which will come half true from seeds, and when one finds such a seedling in any of the sporting families of common plants he keeps it for a breeder, even if it were the worst-looking in a large batch of seedlings. The way with Cinerarias more than with most plants is this - by a careful selection of kinds under high cultivation one gets a superior strain, as we say, or superior flowers, which, although they will not come true from seed, will produce more good seedlings, or less bad ones, than an inferior Strain: therefore, if a good flower or good strain of Cineraria is exposed to the pollen or influence of a bad strain, the good breed is immediately deteriorated in the sporting offspring. I am not aware that any of the garden Cinerarias come true from seeds, or if any of them could now be crossed with the nearest wild species. The only Composite flower on which I ever spent time is Dahlia scapigera, the pretty little dwarf Dahlia with small shining foliage, and I think I can venture to assert that in our climate it is impossible to cross it with any of the garden Dahlias. It is just the same among Primulas; notwithstanding the freedom with which Auriculas and Polyanthuses will sport among themselves, you can not drive a seedling from all their races by the pollen of their nearest kindreds.

When Primula Palinuri and sinensis, which were introduced the same year, (1816,) came into general cultivation, I was initiated into the mystery of crossing flowers, and these two were of the number which raised the hopes of the cross-breeders, particularly Palinuri, which, to a common observer, is nothing beyond a huge Auricula; but none of the wild species of Primula would touch each other or the garden varieties. Then you see no end of sport seedlings in the Dahlia and in the Primula, in two distinct species of Primula and two botanical species of Dahlia; and yet the rest of their families obstinately hold aloof from each other, and from the sports of their respective kinds.

"The old Hollyhocks, or some of them, were fixed varieties; but whether they were so fixed from the first, or induced to fix by a long course of culture by propagation of the roots, we do not know, but the fact is well known that some of the old kinds would come true from seeds. A long course of one uniform culture renders some plants barren altogether, as Crocuses, and a long period of years intervened between the birth of some seedlings and their coming to the age of puberty - to the age of producing seeds, although they may have flowered from the second or third year from the seed. Ribes sanguineum flowered six or seven years before it began to seed; and Dr. Herbert records an instance in which a certain seedling bulb flowered fourteen years before it produced pollen or would seed.

"'The relative periods of maturity of the pollen and stigma,' seems to have been a wise law from the beginning for the preservation of the kinds of plants in their generations, for there is not a flower in a thousand that is fertilized by its own immediate pollen. The pollen is in advance of the stigma in the great mass of flowers, and the pollen from another flower on the same or neighboring stalk is the fertilizer. And here another wise law is in operation: When the stigma is ripe it is exposed to the influence of the pollen of all the plants of its own kind which may be growing near it; and the law is, that the pollen of the flower, or of the plant which is the strongest or best developed, takes the lead in fertilizing the stigma, and at the same time is able to neutralize any effects that may have been produced by an inferior pollen, or pollen from a weaker flower or sickly or stunted plant - a thing which can be proved any day in the summer by dusting the stigma with its own and sundry pollen, when one kind of pollen only will take effect.

And that proves two things in addition to the proof that the best pollen takes the lead - proves superfoetation to be impossible, and also proves that the ideas of physiologists are not according to Nature as to the progress of the pollen to the ovary. They say that pollen passes through tubes of extreme tenuity to the ovules. If that were so, and more than one stigma supplied the necessary passage, more than one kind of pollen might find access to the ovules, and more kinds than enough would fertilize the embryo seeds, and superfoetation would necessarily result.

"In the instance mentioned by Mr. Darwin of Sweet Peas never crossing, they belong to a class of flowers every one of which must, of necessity, be fertilized by its own pollen in the great majority of instances. The carina, or keel, or lower petal in pea-shaped flowers is, in reality, two petals joined at the edges. The joining is the keel; the ends of these two petals lap over or fold into each other, forming the imaginary bow of the boat; the stamens and the pistil are compressed within the folds forming the bow, and fertilization is effected in the dark, and the stigma is perfectly safe from the intrusion of foreign pollen: there-fore, no garden Pea can be naturally crossed more than a Sweet Pea, unless, indeed, a strong bee with other pollen on his legs has been struggling to get at the nectar in the stern of the boat. Some of the varieties of the garden Pea may be crosses resulting from a struggle of that kind, but the great majority of them are the results of the sporting tendencies of the plant itself. This is the true cryptogams of Nature, of which, however, there are many more perfect instances.

The great bulk of the order of Bellworts, or Campanulas, are real cryptogams; their fertilization is effected in the dark before the flower expands; but the Wheat might be said to be the most complete cryptogam of all the common plants. No kind of Wheat has ever been naturally crossed, and never can be. When the Royal Agricultural Society talk about the Wheat being in blossom, they are just one month behind Nature. But what they and the bulk of the country people take for the flowering of the Wheat, is one of the most beautiful contrivances in Nature as means to an end, a departure from the law of Nature as it were, to preserve food for man. The Wheat is in full flower, and the seed is fertilized while the ear is yet in the folds of the sheath before the Wheat is in ear. At that period the anthers might be said to be sessile, or to have hardly any length of stamens under them; but as soon as the pollen is shed, the husk of the anther might rot in such close confinement and endanger the safety of the staff of life, now having just received vitality. To prevent famine for lack of Wheat, however, Nature alters her common process in this matter.