258 



The Journal of Heredity 



"The acid flavor of the muskmelon is 

 encountered in the forms of the canta- 

 loupe and the snake-melon; in others, 

 the form of the cantaloupe dominated." 



Simiming up the results of his experi- 

 ments in a general conclusion, he says, 

 with regard to the natural expectation 

 that in a hybrid there will be a complete 

 or partial fusion of the parental charac- 

 ters, that "this fusion of characters may 

 take place in certain cases; but it has 

 appeared to me that, in general, things 

 did not take place in this way;" and 

 again: "It has appeared to me that, in 

 general, the resemblance of the hybrid 

 to its two ascendants consisted, not in 

 an intimate fusion of the diverse 

 characters peculiar to each one of them 

 in particular, but rather in a distribu- 

 tion, equal or unequal, of the same 

 characters." (Italics inserted.) 



Here we meet again, for the first time 

 in the literature of hybridization, the 

 phrase "distribution of characters" now 

 so familiar. "These facts," Sageret 

 remarks, "have been confirmed by a 

 multitude of my experiments." It is 

 evident from the following statement 

 that Sageret appraised his discovery of 

 the dominance of characters in crossing 

 at its proper value: "The ideas which I 

 present," he says, "have appeared 

 remarkable to me ; they seem to me to be 

 of a very great importance." 



In addition to his melon crosses, 

 Sageret secured a hybrid between a 

 black radish and a cabbage, of which he 

 says: "The fruits, instead of being inter- 

 mediate, were like either cabbage or 

 radish on the same inflorescence. Each 

 silique bore a single seed, analogous to 

 its pod," to which he makes reference in 

 a further comment upon "the distribu- 

 tion among hybrids, of the characters of 

 their ascendants without fusion of these 

 characters," a point of view with regard 

 to the results of hybridization that needs 

 little to make it modern. It is, however, 

 a matter of further interest that Sageret 

 was able to derive the natural scientific 

 conclusion from the facts of unit- 

 character inheritance as he found them, 

 with respect to the reappearance of old 

 or the appearance of new "species." 

 The hybrids "often reproduced for me," 



he says, "varieties which had long ago 

 disappeared." 



He finally concludes : "To what, then, 

 does this faculty belong, which nature 

 has, of reproducing upon the descend- 

 ants such or such a character which had 

 belonged to their ancestors ? We do not 

 know. We are able, however, to sus- 

 pect that it depends upon a type, upon 

 a primitive mould, which contains the 

 germ which sleeps and awakens, which 

 develops or not according to circum- 

 stances, and possibly that which we call 

 a new species, in which develop organs, 

 ancient but forgotten, of which the genu 

 existed, but which the development had 

 not yet favored." 



DARWIN ON HYBRIDS 



On November 24, 1859, appeared the 

 first edition of Darwin's epoch-making 

 book, "The Origin of Species," in which 

 he briefly reviewed (Chap. 9) the results 

 and conclusions regarding hybrids and 

 hybridization up to his time. In read- 

 ing Darwin's chapter one is strangely 

 struck by the persistence of the species- 

 variety question. 



Is this a "species," or is it merely a 

 "variety?" — a question which crossing 

 was expected to answer. If two organ- 

 isms would not cross, or if their offspring 

 were sterile, they were thereby proved 

 to be distinct "species." If they freely 

 intercrossed, or if their offspring were 

 fertile, then, ipso facto, they were 

 "varieties" of the same species. Dar- 

 win's thesis — that "species," so called, 

 grew out of "varieties" so called, by 

 natural selection, caused him to review 

 the evidence which the work of the 

 hybridists, especially Koelreuter, Gart- 

 ner and Herbert, afforded. Regarding 

 the matter of the relation of hybrids to 

 species-affinity, Darwin writes with his 

 usual conservative wisdom : 



"No one has been able to point out 

 what kind or what amount of difference, 

 in any recognizable character, is suffi- 

 cient to prevent two species crossing. 

 It can be shown that plants most widely 

 different in habit and general appear- 

 ance, and having strongly marked 

 differences in everv ]Dart of the flower, 

 even in the pollen, in the fruit and in the 



