Page:Transactions of the Linnean Society of London, Volume 12.djvu/427

Rh were planted in pots, in different successive seasons, for the purpose of experiment:—the common wood, the white alpine, the Duke of Kent's, or wood-strawberry of Canada, the common scarlet, the Bath scarlet, the pine, the black, the white Chili, and the hautbois, with some others which proved to be varieties of the common scarlet, but to which no particular name had been given. The pollen of the Wood-strawberry was introduced into blossoms of the White alpine, from which the stamina had some days previously been extracted in an immature state. Abundant seeds were produced, which afforded offspring generally similar to their male parent in taste, flavour, and colour. The wood-strawberry of Canada, the common scarlet, the Bath scarlet, the pine, the black, and the white Chili afforded under similar circumstances abundant offspring, however crossed, and the offspring presented every intermediate shade of character between these varieties; but none of them would intermix with the wood or while alpine. The Hautbois did not breed with any of the preceding varieties, except in one instance with the Bath scarlet, from the seeds of which I obtained plants which proved apparently to be mules. I preserved these several years, in which they made feeble and always abortive efforts to produce blossoms. In external character all of these a good deal resembled the hautbois in foliage and general habit; and two of them were not readily distinguishable from plants of that species.

The preceding results, therefore, lead me to conclude that our gardens contain three, and three only, distinct species of strawberry, one of which has sported very widely in varieties.

I much wish that some members of this learned Society would make experiments, similar to those above stated, upon the different species and varieties of plants now comprehended within the genus Rosa, Salix, Pelargonium, and others. Many of the Rh