PLANT HYBRIDIZATION BEFORE MENDEL 



263 



Flowers 



Corolla 



Spots on corolla 



Anthers 



D. purpurea 

 Large, cernuous 



Purple 



Numerous, 

 deep purple 



Deeper orange- 

 yellow, with 

 numerous 

 spots, often 

 confluent 



Hybrid lutea X 

 purpurea 



Medium size, near- 

 ly horizontal 



Yellow ground, 

 tinted with red 



A few dark pur- 

 plish red spots 

 Lighter yellow, Yellow, inclining to 

 no spots orange, with a 



few small, scat- 

 tered purplish 

 red spots 



D. lutea 



Small, more 

 drooping 

 Yellow 



No spots 



b. Marfarlane. 



In the 90's of the last century, J. M. Macfarlane (6) published 

 considerable work based upon a histological study of the charac- 

 ters of hybrids and of their parents, which did much to throw 

 light upon the ultimate character of the hybrid condition in the 

 Fj generation. As the result of these investigations upon the his- 

 tological details of many hybrids and of their parents, Macfar- 

 lane was able to take a much more exact point of view regarding 

 the structural characters in hybrids than most of his contempo- 

 raries, one indeed for which few data then existed, and in which 

 investigation seems not to have been continued until the post- 

 Mendelian work of Darbishire (1), on the structure of the starch 

 grains in crosses of peas. 



Macfarlane's work was first presented at the meeting of the 

 Edinburgh Botanical Society, March 1890, the first published con- 

 tribution being an article in the Gardeners' Chronicle for May 3 

 (6a). In this article he says: 



"During the last few years I have studied minutely the general and 

 microscopic structure of pitchered and insectivorous plants. At an early 

 stage in my investigations, I was struck by the perfect blendings in cer- 

 tain well-known hybrids of the appearance presented by their parents, 

 and this, not merely in habit, consistence, shape and color, but even in 

 such minute details as the relative number of stomata in a given area, 

 the size and shape of the cell hairs, and of the cells from which these 

 sprung, and the mode of disposition of thickening substance on their 

 primary cell wall." (p. 543.) 



A series of seventeen hybrid Sarracenias formed the first prin- 

 cipal material. It is stated : 



"As one after another of these was passed under the microscope, I was 

 gradually inclined to believe that a hybrid plant may exhibit blending 



