Along the front stage in the green-house we noticed a collection of new Australian seedlings. Some of these were raised here; the rest is the cream of the large collection raised last year in the Clapton Nursery, from seeds sent to Mr. Low: these were received in exchange for a beautiful corrï¾µa, raised by Mr. Beaton at Haffield. (See our preceding Volume, p. 94.) This corrï¾µa Mr. Low thinks far superior to any of the new seedlings; and we believe a figure of it will soon appear in Paxton's Magazine of Botany. There are many other cross seedlings of corrï¾µas and other plants in progress here, which, as soon as they are proved, will soon find their way into other collections. Mr. Beaton has been for many years trying to prove Mr. Knight's theory of vegetable superf£tation, and promises (p. 161.) to send us an account of his failures. But he says, on reviewing his notes, he finds the action of the pollen in some instances so very different from what it is generally believed to be, that he shall put off saying anything on the subject till he sees how far this difference takes place in different genera or families. Our readers will recollect what Mr. Beaton wrote on the crossing of fuchsias in a former volume. We here saw what Mr. Beaton calls the most curious cross yet obtained among the fuchsias: it is a seedling from F. arborescens fecundated by the pollen of F. excorticata. It is nearly four years old, and has shown no disposition to flower. The parent plant is upwards of 12 ft. high, and beautifully branched. Mr. Beaton dusted many thousand flowers of F. arborescens with the pollen of different fuchsias, and raised many thousand seedlings from plants so dusted for several successive years; but this single instance is the only deviation he found from the arborescens. When this cross and the other splendid crosses from the F. fulgens will come to interbreed, they will raise the character of this favourite family far beyond what we have any conception of now.
The many importations of orchidaceous plants, from Mexico and the north-east parts of South America, have filled the orchidaceous house here to suffocation. The cultivation of so many newly received plants, requiring a different treatment from established plants, prevented Mr. Beaton from following our Mr. Wailes's suggestion on the atmospheric temperature and moisture in the orchidaceous house. He highly approves of Mr. Paxton's mode of growing Dendrobia, and other similar plants. Some of these plants here begin to show blossom buds in a week or ten days after taking them into the orchidaceous house from their winter quarters. Mr. Beaton maintains that no extensive collection of this order can be kept for any length of time in a fine flowering condition without the use of two houses; the second house to be kept quite dry and cool; and the plants, while resting here, to be kept exposed to the fril rays of the sun. There are many new and undescribed species here, particularly among the Mexican Orchidaceï¾µ.
