164 PLANT HYBRIDIZATION BEFORE MENDEL 



"Previous experiments have taught me that Phaseoli of one species, 

 but of two different kinds of flowers and seeds, when placed together, 

 bear differently colored seeds, and, in the second generations, also differ- 

 ently colored flowers." (p. 23.) 



Wiegmann carried on some field experiments with beans, 

 vetches, oats, and cabbage, in which adjoining rows of plants 

 were allowed to freely cross-pollinate through the agency of the 

 wind and insects, from which he concluded : 



"It appears further, from the behavior of the Leguminosae and of 

 cabbage, that agronomists and gardeners cannot be careful enough in the 

 arrangement of their fields in order not to suffer from the great damage 

 through hybrid fertilization occurring even the first year." (p. 36.) 



Speaking generally, he says further : 



"It is not entirely improbable that that which exhibited itself to me 

 thus far, as being peculiar to the Leguminosae alone, may take place also 

 among other plant-families, and the clearing up of this matter remains 

 very desirable for botany, as well as for agriculture in particular." 

 (P- 30.) 



Wiegmann's work, as a whole, impresses one as the work of a 

 man without scientific prepossessions, willing to investigate for 

 himself, and to dispute freely the authority of other investigators, 

 such as Linnaeus, Kolreuter, and Gartner, and, withal, a man 

 with a practical bias for and sympathy with agriculture. 



23. The Work of Carl Friedrich von Gartner. 



In the valley of the Nagold, in the Black Forest region of 

 Wiirtemberg, some forty miles southeast of Stuttgart, the capital, 

 lies the village of Calw. 



Here Kolreuter, whose home was in Sulz, a little way to the 

 south, also in the Neckar valley, lived for a time, and did some 

 of his work in hybridization, in the garden of a local physician. 

 By a curious coincidence, in the same village of Calw in which 

 Kolreuter had previously worked, and but forty miles north of 

 Sulz, where the latter had formerly obtained the first hybrid plant 

 ever produced in a scientific experiment, lived and died Carl 

 Friedrich von Gartner, who for twenty-five years conducted ex- 

 tensive experimental work in hybridization. He was a physician, 

 and son of the distinguished botanist, Joseph Gartner, Professor 

 at Tubingen and St. Petersburg, and author of an authoritative 

 work on the seeds and fruits of plants, in which were figured 

 the morphology of more than a thousand species. The introduc- 



