Eaperiments in thk Hybridization of Cekeat.s. 429 



of two very minute portions of thoin, should re-enforco 

 vitalitj', we do not know, and can hardly conjecture. Now, 

 from all observations upon the fecundation of the cereals, 

 and of the other o-encra of the order of <n'asses to which 

 they belong, we are led to believe that close self-fertilization 

 is the law of the order. Impregnation of the ovules is 

 accomplished " within closed doors " before the nicely fitting 

 glumes and palets open to unfurl to the mid-day l)reeze the 

 emptied stamens. Hence, in view of the principle which 

 Darwin deduced from the discoveries of those sagacious 

 experimenters, Kolreuter, and Gartner, and Knight, and 

 Sagcret, and Wiegman, and Naudin, and Lecoq, and Her- 

 bert, and which our own Gray so fully accepts, may we not 

 expect to gain from cross-fertilization, in operations upon 

 ■wheat and other cereals, if anywhere, increased vigor in the 

 offspring? And, accompanying increased vigor, we should 

 find greater hardiness and productiveness. Two instances in 

 point are on record : " Mr. Maund exhibited before the 

 Royal Agricultural Society [1846,] specimens of crossed 

 wheat, together with their parent varieties ; and the editor 

 [of the Societ-ifs Transactions^ states that they were inter- 

 mediate in character, united with that greater vigor of growth, 

 •which, it appears, in the vegetable as in the animal world, 

 is the result of a first cross. Knight also crossed several 

 varieties of wheat, and he says ' that in the years 1795 and 

 1796, when almost the whole crop of wheat in the Island was 

 blighted, the varieties thus obtained, and these only, escaped 

 in this neighborhood, though sown in different soils and sit- 

 uations." — Darwin^ Variation , chap, xviii. 



To these may be added another furnished by the experi- 



