GENERAL REMARKS ON HYBRIDISING AND 

 CROSS-BREEDING. 



"One new variety raised by man will be a more important and interesting subject 

 for study than one more species added to the infinitude of already recorded species." 

 DARWIN : Origin of Species. 



"Nature abhors perpetual self-fertilisation." DARWIN : Fertilisation of Orchids. 



" Let us follow in Darwin's wake. . . . There is romance in the pursuit, and laurels 

 to be gathered by every acute, industrious observer." J. ANDERSON-HENRY. 



PREVIOUS to entering on this subject, it may be as well to 

 remember that nature has for ages gone on improving plants 

 by natural cross-fertilisation and natural selection, or, as some 

 prefer to put it, "the survival of the fittest." Sir John 

 Lubbock, in his interesting little work on ' Flowers and 

 Insects,'* tells us that flowers owe their brilliant colours in a 

 great measure to the kindly offices of their winged visitors 

 and guests insects ; and in this opinion he is borne out by 

 other observers, and a numerous array of facts. In dull- 

 coloured or inconspicuous-flowered families, odour supplies 

 the place of light colours ; and those plants which bloom at 

 night, such as QEnotheras, Yuccas, Cacti, and some Orchids, are 

 in nearly every case white-flowered, and sometimes powerfully 

 scented. But nature does not always work in precisely the 

 same groove, and it is very probable that colour, odour, and 

 nectar or honey, are alike attractive to insect life, and thus 

 indirectly aid in that gradual change, or rather grand series 

 of changes, which is continually taking place in the plant 

 world, and which has doubtless been going on more or less 

 ever since the wind has swept over nature's "wild garden," 

 and the insect has rifled sweets from honey-laden flowers. 

 A correspondent of ' Nature ' advances the following argument 

 to show that the colours of all flowers and plants are not due 



* Macmillan, Bedford Street, W.C. See also a valuable paper in the 

 Journal of Botany, 1873, P- JI > on tne "Influence of Insect Agency on 

 the Distribution of Plants," and " Heredity and Hybridism," a suggestion 

 by E. W. Cox, S.L. (Longmans). 



