94 PLANT HYBRIDIZATION BEFORE MENDEL 



13. Wtllimn Herbert. 



The work of William Herbert was to a considerable extent con- 

 temporary with that of Knight. Born January 12, 1778, son of the 

 Earl of Carnarvon, educated at Eton and Oxford, he was trained 

 for the bar, which he finally left for the Church, entering orders, 

 and finally becoming Dean of Manchester. Fond of out-door life 

 and sport, he possessed also, in addition to literary talent, an 

 instinct for plant studies. Herbert worked largely on the im- 

 provement of florists' flowers but also conducted experiments with 

 some agricultural plants. He was engaged for a considerable time 

 upon his own experiments, before he came upon the work of 

 Kolreuter, some fifty or more years before his day, which he im- 

 mediately assimilated, and estimated at its true value, as the 

 following comment indicates : 



"The first experiments, with a view to ascertain the possibility of pro- 

 ducing hybrid vegetables, appear to have been made in Germany, by 

 Kolreuter, who published reports of his proceedings in the Acts of the 

 Petersburgh Academy between fifty and sixty years ago. Lycium, Digi- 

 talis, Nicotiana, Datura and Lobelia were the chief plants with which he 

 worked successfully, and as I have found nothing in his reports to the 

 best of my recollection opposed to my OAvn general observations, it is 

 unnecessary to state more concerning his mules than the tact that he was 

 the father of such experiments. They do not seem to have been at all fol- 

 lowed up by others, or to have attracted the attention of cultivators or 

 botanists as they ought to have done ; and nothing else material on the 

 subject has fallen under my notice of earlier date than Mr. Knight's re- 

 port of his crosses of fruit trees, and my own of ornamental flowers, in 

 the Transactions of the Horticultural Society of London. Those papers 

 attracted the public notice, and appear to have excited many persons, 

 both in this country and abroad, to similar experiments." (2c, p. 335.) 



In the year 1819, after having paid attention for some years 



to the production of hybrid plants, but then unaware of the work 



of Kolreuter, Herbert brought his views on the subject of hybrids 



before the Horticultural Society, and they were published in the 



"Transactions" of that body. He comments upon the matter as 



follows: 



"It is, however, satisfactory to find at the present day, after the atten- 

 tion of botanists and cultivators has been fully called to the subject 

 during the space of many years, and a multitude of experiments carried 

 on by a variety of persons, that, although our knowledge of its mysteries 

 is still very limited, my general views have been fully verified, and my 

 anticipations confirmed in a manner which I was scarcely sanguine enough 

 to have expected." (2c, p. 336.) 



The view then quite generally prevalent among botanists con- 



