AND CROSS-BREEDING. l6/ 



been, in all the experiments I have brought before you, rather 

 to achieve something useful and practical than to test the 

 theories which Mr Darwin and others especially the Con- 

 tinental savants have been so much engrossed with, I can- 

 not refrain from making some remarks on the results and the 

 conclusions which some of them have come to while prosecut- 

 ing a series of crossing operations namely, that such .crosses 

 do and must eventuate in sterility. M. Naudin seems, like 

 Wichura, as already observed, to have limited his experiments 

 chiefly to herbaceous or soft-wooded plants ; and among such, 

 especially among Calceolarias, I too have often found myself 

 brought to the terminus of bitter and hopeless sterility. I 

 remember one instance where I had reached a perfect monster 

 for size in that tribe, but except in that particular it had no 

 other desirable property. Determined, however, to improve it 

 by crossing, I found on trial I could make nothing of it ; and 

 on examination I found its stigma was a hollow tube, and that 

 its anthers were hard masses, and contained not one particle 

 of pollen. Man may run into such mistakes, but he cannot 

 thence conclude that unviolated nature does so. Speaking 

 from a general recollection, which does not admit of my speci- 

 fying instances, I have often found among hybrid seedlings 

 some of a vigour which, in that respect, were in advance of 

 either parent. May not such often occur in nature ? and, as a 

 naturally-selected parent becomes the progenitor of a hardier 

 and more vigorous race (which having in it, according to 

 Darwin's views, a tendency to diverge), may it not culminate 

 in the long lapse of time into a distinct species, and even 

 annihilate the weaker one which gave it being? So that, in 

 nature's crossing, may not fertility and vigour take the place of 

 sterility and weakness, into which she so generally dwindles 

 when modified by man's device ? * 



* Those interested in hybridisation will find numerous experiments 

 with Willows, &c., recorded in a German work, 'Die Bastardbelusch- 

 tung im Pflanzenreich erlautert an den Bastarden der Weiden;' Von Max 

 Wichura, mit Zwei Tapeln (4to Breslau, 1865). An interesting abstract 

 from this work, by the Rev. M. J. Berkeley, is published in the 'Jour. 

 Royal Hort. Soc.' (new series), i. 57. 



