AND CROSS-BREEDING. 155 



the reciprocal crossing in plants, unlike those which are 

 formed amongst animals, are perfectly alike." I regret to differ 

 from so great an authority as Wichura, and must venture to 

 demur to the doctrine in more decided terms than Mr Berkeley 

 does. I have had so many instances of hybrids taking some- 

 times to one side and sometimes to another but most fre- 

 quently to that of the mother that to those who, like myself, 

 have made experiments with many genera, it would be needless 

 to give instances. The converse is the rarer case i.e., where 

 the paternal type comes out most marked. Yet I remember 

 one eminent instance of a seedling Veronica, from the batch of 

 seedlings from which I obtained V. Andersonii ( V. salirifolia, 

 V. spetiosa), being so like the male parent V. spetiosa, that I 

 presented it to a friend in the belief that it was purely and 

 simply the latter species; but when it bloomed, it showed, 

 by the longer spike, and lighter and brighter colour of the 

 flowers, and by their being a bright crimson instead of very 

 deep purple, which is the colour of the flower of the V. 

 spetiosa, that the blood of the V. salidfolia was there. I can 

 well understand that, as respects the family of Willows, from 

 their being so attractive to bees, and from their being natu- 

 rally so prone to intermix (insomuch that few can tell what is 

 a species and what is a hybrid), Wichura has not much over- 

 stated the fact, and that a distinct intermediate form may 

 generally be reckoned on. 



I must dissent still more strongly from what Wichura lays 

 down, in continuation of the above passage at page 78, as to 

 reciprocal crossings. "The products," he says, "which arise 

 from reciprocal crossing in plants, unlike those which are 

 formed amongst animals, are perfectly alike.* It is of no con- 

 sequence which is the male and which the female parent. It 



* Mr Seden obtained exactly similar results by the reciprocal cross-fer- 

 tilisation of Cypripedium longifolium and C. Schlimii, both having been 

 made the female or seed-bearing parent, fecundated with pollen from the 

 other, and the result was offspring of each precisely the same, two or 

 three hundred seedlings having resulted from this double union, and 

 these are now under cultivation under the name of C. Sedenii. This is a 

 well-authenticated case, for the facts of which I am indebted to Mr Seden 

 himself; and certainly goes to prove the observation of Wichura, who 

 says, "The products which arise from the reciprocal crossing in plants, 

 unlike those formed amongst animals, are perfectly alike." (See Datura.} 

 Some hybrid Aloes, raised at Kew by Mr R. I. Lynch, between A. albo- 

 cincta and A. grandidentata are to all appearance exactly identical in habit 

 and variegation, although the parent species are singularly unlike each 

 other. These hybrids, as in the case of Cypripedium Sedenii, are the result 

 of seeds saved from both the species, each having been crossed with pollen 

 of the other. 



