hat 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.[790] 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_, &c., 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,[791] 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 recrossed, it is no wonder
that Targioni-Tozzetti, in speaking of the common roses of the Italian
gardens, remarks that "the native country and precise for