HYBRIDISATION VIEWED FROM SYSTEMATIC BOTANY. 187 
were almost daily visited and watched by their possessor, whom no 
character or variation escaped: seedlings innumerable, springing up all 
over the ground, were never destroyed till their species were determined, 
and the immutability of each verified by our joint inspection. This was 
the more material, to set aside the gratuitous suppositions of the mixture 
of species, or the production of new or hybrid ones, of which, no 
more than of any change in established species, I have never met with 
an instance’”’ (/.c., p. 164). In 1890 Dr. Buchanan White wrote a Mono- 
graph of the British Willows (“ Journ. Linn. Soc.,” xxvii. pp. 333-457), 
in which he enumerated seventeen species and forty-one hybrids. Many 
of Smith’s so-called ‘‘ species’’ are now ranked as varieties, but at least 
six of them are hybrids, and the number may yet have to be increased, 
for secondary hybrids have been raised artificially, and on the Continent 
a few have been recognised in a wild state; and the result of such recross- 
ing of a species with its hybrid offspring might easily be passed over as a 
variety only unless its origin was known. 
An even worse state of confusion exists in the genus Hieraciwm, which 
seems to be about where Salix was in Smith’s time. ‘‘ New species,” so 
called, have recently been described wholesale, both on the Continent and 
in England, and in some cases the constancy of their characters has been 
tested under cultivation. But what is their systematic value? Babington 
recognises thirty-two British species, but Bentham thinks that seven 
*‘ will probably be found to be the only truly botanical species indigenous 
to Britain.’ What, then, are the others? Bentham says the species are 
some of them very variable, and specimens are frequently found appa- 
rently intermediate between some of the commonest ones.’’ The phrase 
is suggestive of their origin, and I have little doubt that some of the 
recently described British ‘‘ new species’’ are natural hybrids. Indeed, 
two of three were indicated as hybrids by Hanbury, though a further 
remark perhaps indicates why others were not so regarded :—“‘ As recent 
numbers of this Journal show that there are those who refuse to believe 
in the existence of hybrids, even among. . . [Salix and Epilobium] I 
give up as hopeless the task of endeavouring to convince such that they 
exist among Hieracia ”’ (‘‘ Journ. of Bot.,’’ 1892, p. 870). They do exist, 
nevertheless, doubtless in large numbers, and at all events some have 
been reconstructed artificially, being certainly identical with the wild 
types. F. Schultes and G. Mendel raised several artificially, and at least 
seven of them I have seen in the dried state. Many natural hybrids 
have been recognised by Continental authors, and I quickly found thirty 
such plants in the Herbarium at Kew, with their supposed parentage 
indicated, and in two cases both the wild and artificially raised hybrids 
are represented. Four artificial crosses between distinct species, which 
also occur wild, are recorded by Focke, namely H. awricula x pilo- 
sella, H. prealtum x pilosella, H. auricula x pratense, and H. awran- 
tiacum x auricula, and it appears that the second of these crosses proves 
the origin of no fewer than eleven so-called “ species ’’—plants which at least 
have received specific names—and the last as many as four. Surely no 
more eloquent comment is needed, and we may pass on. 
Fubus is another genus which presents that “ chaos of undecided forms 
in the face of which all the efforts of botanical describers miscarry,” and 
