Hooker (10/175. 'Botanical Magazine' tab. 5160 figure 4; Dr. Hooker in 'Gardener's Chronicle' 1860 page 190; Prof. Harvey in 'Gardener's Chronicle' 1860 page 145; Mr. Crocker in 'Gardener's Chron.' 1861 page 1092.) in Begonia frigida. This plant properly produces male and female flowers on the same fascicles; and in the female flowers the perianth is superior; but a plant at Kew produced, besides the ordinary flowers, others which graduated towards a perfect hermaphrodite structure; and in these flowers the perianth was inferior. To show the importance of this modification under a classificatory point of view, I may quote what Prof. Harvey says, namely, that had it "occurred in a state of nature, and had a botanist collected a plant with such flowers, he would not only have placed it in a distinct genus from Begonia, but would probably have considered it as the type of a new natural order." This modification cannot in one sense be considered as a monstrosity, for analogous structures naturally occur in other orders, as with Saxifragae and Aristolochiaceae. The interest of the case is largely added to by Mr. C.W. Crocker's observation that seedlings from the NORMAL flowers produced plants which bore, in about the same proportion as the parent-plant, hermaphrodite flowers having inferior perianths. The hermaphrodite flowers fertilised with their own pollen were sterile.
If florists had attended to, selected, and propagated by seed other modifications of structure besides those which are beautiful, a host of curious varieties would certainly have been raised; and they would probably have transmitted their characters so truly that the cultivator would have felt aggrieved, as in the case of culinary vegetables, if his whole bed had not presented a uniform appearance. Florists have attended in some instances to the leaves of their plant, and have thus produced the most elegant and symmetrical patterns of white, red, and green, which, as in the case of the pelargonium, are sometimes strictly inherited. (10/176. Alph. de Candolle 'Geograph. Bot.' page 1083; 'Gardener's Chronicle' 1861 page 433. The inheritance of the white and golden zones in Pelargonium largely depends on the nature of the soil. See D. Beaton in 'Journal of Horticulture' 1861 page 64.) Any one who will habitually examine highly- cultivated flowers in gardens and greenhouses will observe numerous deviations in structure; but most of these must be ranked as mere monstrosities, and are only so far interesting as showing how plastic the organisation becomes under high cultivation. From this point of view such works as Professor Moquin-Tandon's 'Teratologie' are highly instructive.
ROSES.
These flowers offer an instance of a number of forms generally ranked as species, namely, R. centifolia, gallica, alba, damascena, spinosissima, bracteata, indica, semperflorens, moschata, etc., which have largely varied and been intercrossed. The genus Rosa is a notoriously difficult one, and, though some of the above forms are admitted by all botanists to be distinct species, others are doubtful; thus, with respect to the British forms, Babington makes seventeen, and Bentham only five species. The hybrids from some of the most distinct forms--for instance, from R. indica, fertilised by the pollen of R. centifolia--produce an abundance of seed; I state this on the authority of Mr. Rivers (10/177. 'Rose Amateur's Guide' T. Rivers 1837 page 21.) from whose work I have drawn most of the following statements. As almost all the aboriginal forms brought from different countries have been crossed and re-crossed, it is no wonder that Targioni- Tozzetti, in speaking of the common roses of the Italian gardens, remarks that "the native country and precise form of the wild type of most of them are involved in much uncertainty." (10/178. 'Journal Hort. Soc.' volume 9 1855 page 182.) Nevertheless, Mr. Rivers in referring to R. indica (page 68) says that the descendants of each group may generally be recognised by a close observer. The same author often speaks of roses as having been a little hybridised; but it is evident that in very many cases the differences due to variation and to hybridisation can now only be conjecturally distinguished.