126 PLANT HYBRIDIZATION BEFORE MENDEL 



when they grow In company with their parents, and this return move- 

 ment manifests itself much more in the following generations." (2c, 

 p. 174). 



Godron remarks that the same fact has been observed by Lecoq 

 in the fertile hybrids of Mirabilis, by Naudin in the fertile hy- 

 brids of Nicotia7ia, and by several observers in Primula and in 

 Petunia. 



From these experiments, then, he considers the proof of the 

 final return of fertile hybrids to their parental forms to be 

 established. 



Godron was a victim of the rigid idea of species, which held 

 that, because so many hybrids between different "species," so- 

 called, were sterile, therefore any hybrid which turned out to be 

 fertile must necessarily, ipso facto, prove the parents not to be 

 of different species, but to be merely varieties of the same species. 



To the vain purpose of settling this verbal controversy, 

 whether such and such plants were to be regarded as separate 

 "species," or merely as "varieties" of the same species, many of 

 the most ardent endeavors of hybridists, both before and since 

 Mendel's time, have been conscientiously and duly devoted. A 

 sample of this method of reasoning in a circle, so vigorously 

 combatted by Herbert, and characterized by him as "fighting the 

 air," is exemplified in a sentence of Godron's which typifies the 

 general view at that time. He speaks of a 



"law which has its sanction in the numerous experiments which, for a 

 century past, have been made by Kolreuter, Wiegmann, C. F. Gartner, 

 etc., and by M. Naudin himself, that siinple hybrids are sterile or but 

 little fertile." (2c, p. 139.) 



Considering the fact, however, that the hybrids between con- 

 fessedly distinct species are so frequently sterile, it is not sur- 

 prising that, in view of the then greater interest in the species 

 question itself, hybridizers should have turned systematic bota- 

 nists, and have made the sterility of the hybrid offspring a cri- 

 terion of species distinction. 



Besides his competing memoir before the Paris Academy, God- 

 ron was the author of several other contributions to the literature 

 of plant hybridization, including that of the celebrated question 

 as to the possible origin of cultivated wheat from the wild plant 

 Aegilops ovata. 



