Seeds of this plant were sent me by Fritz Muller, who found it, as well as some other species of the same genus, quite sterile in its native home of South Brazil, unless fertilised with pollen from a distinct plant, either artificially or naturally by humming-birds. (9/9.  ‘Jenaische Zeitschr. fur Naturwiss’ B. 7 1872 page 22 and 1873 page 441.) Several plants were raised from these seeds and kept in the hothouse.  They produced flowers very early in the spring, and twenty of them were fertilised, some with pollen from the same flower, and some with pollen from other flowers on the same plants; but not a single capsule was thus produced, yet the stigmas twenty-seven hours after the application of the pollen were penetrated by the pollen-tubes.  At the same time nineteen flowers were crossed with pollen from a distinct plant, and these produced thirteen capsules, all abounding with fine seeds.  A greater number of capsules would have been produced by the cross, had not some of the nineteen flowers been on a plant which was afterwards proved to be from some unknown cause completely sterile with pollen of any kind.  Thus far these plants behaved exactly like those in Brazil; but later in the season, in the latter part of May and in June, they began to produce under a net a few spontaneously self-fertilised capsules.  As soon as this occurred, sixteen flowers were fertilised with their own pollen, and these produced five capsules, containing on an average 3.4 seeds.  At the same time I selected by chance four capsules from the uncovered plants growing close by, the flowers of which I had seen visited by humble-bees, and these contained on an average 21.5 seeds; so that the seeds in the naturally intercrossed capsules to those in the self-fertilised capsules were as 100 to 16.  The interesting point in this case is that these plants, which were unnaturally treated by being grown in pots in a hothouse, under another hemisphere, with a complete reversal of the seasons, were thus rendered slightly self-fertile, whereas they seem always to be completely self-sterile in their native home.

Senecio cruentus (greenhouse varieties, commonly called Cinerarias, probably derived from several fruticose or herbaceous species much intercrossed (9/10.  I am much obliged to Mr. Moore and to Mr. Thiselton Dyer for giving me information with respect to the varieties on which I experimented.  Mr. Moore believes that Senecio cruentas, tussilaginis, and perhaps heritieri, maderensis and populifolius have all been more or less blended together in our Cinerarias.))

Two purple-flowered varieties were placed under a net in the greenhouse, and four corymbs on each were repeatedly brushed with flowers from the other plant, so that their stigmas were well covered with each other’s pollen.  Two of the eight corymbs thus treated produced very few seeds, but the other six produced on an average 41.3 seeds per corymb, and these germinated well.  The stigmas on four other corymbs on both