INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 23 



form distinct from either parent, does, in one sense, create 

 what may temporarily pass for a species ; and in so far as the 

 hybrid combines the characters of both parents, it tempora- 

 rily obliterates the distinctive characters of each. All, then, 

 that we could legitimately conclude from these facts is, that 

 were hybrids of universal occurrence, they would have obli- 

 terated all traces of species, but that, exceptional in art, and 

 not proven if not almost impossible in nature, they cannot be 

 assumed to have produced any appreciable result. 



There are, however, other points connected with the subject 

 of hybridity, which are of practical importance to the syste- 

 matist ; and in the first place, the fact of its being generally 

 assumed by continental botanists that hybrids do occur in na- 

 ture, must not be overlooked. Thus we have so-called hybrid 

 gentians in the Jura, and hybrid thistles in Germany ; whence 

 the possibility of similar productions occurring in India is to 

 be borne in mind. It is, however, a singular fact, that these 

 hybrids are vouched for only in genera most notoriously 

 apt to vary, and mainly by hair-splitting botanists. In the 

 course of our extended wanderings, it has been our habit to 

 acquaint ourselves with the plants as we gathered them, and 

 so to observe their differential characters in the field, that we 

 were never at a loss for the means of understanding one an- 

 other when alluding to any particular species; yet we never 

 met with a plant that suggested to us even a suspicion of hy- 

 bridization. Dr. Wallich, whose tropical experience is pro- 

 bably greater than that of any other botanist whatever, and 

 whose mind and eyes were always open to seize characters and 

 discriminate species, makes the same remark. Griffith, a man 

 of singular powers of observation, and whose experience was 

 very great, never alludes to the subject; nor is the existence 

 of hybrids in nature ever noticed in the pages of Roxburgh, 

 Jack, Wight, or Gardner (of Ceylon) * It is very true that 



* M. Jordan has not unfrequently, it would appear, found that seeds col- 

 lected on particular species have produced a different form, and he has not hesi- 

 tated to infer that the ovides of the plant had been impregnated by a different 



