42 PLANT HYBRIDIZATION BEFORE MENDEL 



she has transferred one plant to Africa, and assigned to another its 

 place in America. Perhaps in part for this reason it has happened, that 

 she has enclosed within the boundaries of a certain region only such 

 plants as, in regard to structure, have the least resemblance amongst 

 themselves, and which, consequently, are also least qualified to cause a 

 confusion amongst themselves, if these conjectures have their founda- 

 tion, as I almost believe, then, in the botanical gardens, where plants of 

 all kinds and from all parts of the world, are together in a narrow 

 space, hybrid plants will probably be able to originate, especially if one 

 puts them together according to a systematic arrangement, and conse- 

 quently those which have the greatest resemblance to one another. Man 

 at least here gives to plants, in a certain manner, the opportunity which 

 he gives to his animals brought from parts of the world lying far dis- 

 tant from one another, Avhich he keeps confined, contrary to nature, in 

 a zoological garden, or in a still narrower space. Would indeed a gold- 

 finch ever have mated with a canary bird, and have produced hybrid 

 offspring, if man had not provided for them the opportunity of coming 

 to know one another more closely^ Should not, therefore, hybrid plants 

 have already arisen in botanical gardens '? Precisely the reasons, which 

 to me made their production under natural conditions suspicious, move 

 me to admit it under this unnatural one. Because I had already been 

 long convinced of the sex of plants, and had never doubted the possi- 

 bility of such an unnatural procreation, yet I still allowed mj^self to be 

 deterred by nothing from instituting experiments on this subject, in the 

 good hope that I might perhaps be indeed so fortunate as to procure a 

 hybrid plant. I have finally in fact, after many experiments instituted in 

 vain with many kinds of plants, in the past yea.T of 1760, in the case of 

 two different species of a natural genus (bey zwoen verschiedenen Gat- 

 tungen eines natiirlichen Geschlechts), namely, in the case of Nicotiana 

 {paniculata) [Linn. Sp. Pi., p. 180, n. 2], and Nicotiana (rustica) [Linn. 

 Sp. Pi., p. 180, n. 3], gotten so far that I have fertilized with the pollen- 

 dust (Saamenstaube) of the former, the ovary of the other, obtained 

 perfect seeds, and from these, still in the same year, have raised young 

 plants." (la, pp. 29-30.) 



Regarding the nature of his experiment, Kolreuter says: 



"since I have made this experiment with many flowers, at different 

 times and with all possible precaution, and have thereby every time 

 obtained normal fertilization and perfect seeds, I could not in the least 

 believe that perchance an oversight might have occurred in the experi- 

 ment, and that the plants already produced from the seeds, of which 

 seventy-eight had come from a hundred and ten seeds, should be only 

 ordinary mother plants. Although I could not immediately quite dis- 

 cern much in them that was unusual and strange, yet I had already 

 found a noticeable difference between the natural seeds and those pro- 

 duced artificially, which let me doubt so much the less of the young 

 plants grown therefrom not being true hybrids. I was finally completely 

 convinced of it, when more than twenty of them which I had kept over 

 winter, partly in the room and partly in a cold green-house, came into 

 flower in the month of March just past. I was with much satisfaction 

 aware, that not alone in the spread of the branches, in the position and 

 color of the flowers throughout, they held precisely the mean between 



