I do not know whether any exotic Vincas seed, or whether gardeners would wish them to seed, and so raise new varieties. Having never observed the large Periwinkle or Vinca major to produce seed, and having read that this never occurs in Germany, I was led to examine the flower. The pistil, as botanists know, is a curious object, consisting of a style, thickening upwards, with a horizontal wheel on the top; and this is surmounted by a beautiful brush of white filaments. The concave tire of the wheel is the stigmatic surface, as was very evident when pollen was placed on it, by the penetration of the pollen-tubes. The pollen is soon shed out of the anthers, and lies embedded in little alcoves in the white filamentous brush above the stigma. Hence it was clear that the pollen could not get on to the stigma without the aid of insects, which, as far as I have observed in England, never visit this flower. Accordingly, I took a fine bristle to represent the proboscis of a moth, and passed it down between the anthers, near the sides of the corolla; for I found that the pollen sticks to the bristle and is carried down to the viscid stigmatic surface. I took the additional precaution of passing it down first between the anthers of one flower and then of another, so as to give the flowers the advantage of a cross; and I passed it down between several of the anthers in each case. I thus acted on six flowers on two plants growing in pots; the germens of these swelled, and on four out of the six I have now got fine pods, above 1$\frac{1}{2}$ inch in length, with the seeds externally visible; whereas the flower stalks of the many other flowers all shanked off. I wish any one who wishes to obtain seed of any other species that does not habitually seed try this simple little experiment and report the result.² I shall sow the seeds of my Vinca for the chance of a sport: for a plant which seeds so rarely might be expected to give way to some freak on so unusual and happy an occasion.

Charles Darwin,

Down, Bromley, Kent.