HYBRIDISING AND CROSS-BREEDING. 121 



pollen of another variety of the same race is but "rarely potent 

 enough to overcome this reversional inclination ; and in order 

 to fix or render permanent any race of varieties, the pollen of 

 a third species or robust variety of another race seems almost 

 an absolute necessity ; for where varieties of the same race are 

 inter-crossed we get infinite variety, but no fixity of character 

 either in vigour, size, colour, or form, and the tendency to 

 revert to ancestral types shows itself continually. 



Dr Denny's theory as to the prepotence of the male parent 

 is, however, by no means a new one, since this was long ago 

 pointed out (see Gard Chron., 1844, p. 459). "In the midst 

 of many experiments conducted without exactness, from which 

 no safe conclusion can be drawn, there are some which, in the 

 hands of such men as the Dean of Manchester, seem to justify 

 the important inference that, as a general rule, the properties of 

 the male parent will be most conspicuous in the hybrid. For 

 example, Mr Herbert crossed the long yellow-cupped common 

 Daffodil with the small red-edge-cupped Poets' Daffodil ; and 

 the seeds of the common Daffodil furnished a plant with most of 

 the attributes of the Poets' Narcissus. The same gentleman also 

 obtained out of a capsule of Rhododendron ponticum, fertilised 

 with Azalea pontica, seedlings which had entirely the habit of the 

 latter or male parent. In like manner the arborescent crimson- 

 flowered Rhododendron altadarense was raised from the seed 

 of the dwarf pallid R. catawbiense, hybridised by the crimson 

 R. arboreiim ; and when the common scarlet Azalea with its 

 narrow leaves was fertilised at Highclerc by a A. pontica, Mr 

 Gowen found its seeds produced plants much more like the male 

 than the female parent. Exceptions, or apparent exceptions, 

 to this do no doubt exist, and hybrids could be found which 

 are either half-way between their father and mother, or more 

 like the mother than the father; but, as the means of judging at 

 present exist, these would seem to be the exception and not 

 the rule; and therefore the greater influence of the male may 

 be taken as a tolerably safe guide in all experiments in this 

 interesting art." 



Since writing the above, I find in the ' Gardener's Chronicle,' 

 1855, p. 451, the following interesting remarks on the question 

 of male or female prepotence in hybridising. Gaertner's nu- 

 merous experiments gave such varied results that no inference 

 one way or the other could be drawn. The late Dean Her- 

 bert and others, however, believed in the prepotence of the male 

 or pollen parent, and the following eight cases are quoted : 



* i. Anemone vitifolio-japonica ( $ A. vitifolia, $ A.japonica). 

 * Hybrids raised by Mr Gordon in the Chiswick Garden. 



