278 AUSTRALIAN BEE LORE AND BEE CULTURE. 



genus with genus to produce new genera. Species with species 

 will sometimes produce hybrids, but the result is that these mules 

 are seldom capable of being reproduced from seeds, and wlien such 

 is the case, they die out after one or two generations of sickly 

 vitality. Nevertheless, hybrids so produced can be perpetuated 

 by grafting, budding, Szc. Hybrid annual seedlines seldom last 

 for more than one season. Nature has always a tendency to revert 

 to the original fonn from whence it sprung. In the ages gone by, 

 whatever may have been the natural law as it regards the "de- 

 velopment of species," the law now, in these later times, appears 

 to have been repealed, not only in that of species, but even largely 

 in that of varieties. Hybrids and varieties, both in the vegetable 

 and animal kingdom, when removed from the fostering care of 

 man, degenerate gradually but surely to the prototypes from whence 



they came. 



I notice that I have used the terms "natural orders" to pro- 

 duce new orders, "genus" to produce genera, &c. ; this may not 

 be equally clear to all readers. But let us take an illustration 

 from every-day poultry-yard life. Everyone engaged in it knows 

 it is utterly impossible to obtain a hybrid between a duck and a 

 fowl ; while a hybrid between a Muscovy and an Aylesbury, or 

 a Pekin duck, are of frequent occurrence, but these mules so pro- 

 duced are never reproductive amongst themselves, because the 

 Aylesbury is a different species to that of the Muscovy. Again, 

 if an Aylesbury duck be ci-ossed with a Rouen, the cross-bred 

 descendants are as reproductive among themselves as their parents 

 would be among members of their own family because they are 

 varieties of the same species. These same rules apply equally well 

 to members of the plant world. 



Pollen is the vital agent in the reproduction of all fruit crops, 

 and also the life-cell in the reproduction and perpetuation of all 

 phanerogamic plants, i.e., plants having conspicuous flowers, has 

 already been shown. In this division of the vegetable kingdom 

 it has been pointed out that reproduction is the result of a union 

 between ovules and pollen grains, the former being the cells of 

 matter, and the latter the life-cells. The methods or agents em- 

 ployed by Nature to bring about this union in plant-life are various. 

 In nearly all of them, excepting that of the union that is produced 

 by insects, it is extremely haphazard. Indeed, the union that is 

 brought about by other insects than bees is almost as fluctuating 

 as ithat of other agencies, such as wind, &c., if we except the bee 

 family, and this family must be gradually narrowed down to the 



