PATIENCE REWARDED 291 



Such experiments in hybridizing and selection 

 as were part of the everyday work at Santa Rosa 

 and Sebastopol, season after season, involving 

 thousands of species, had been performed else- 

 where only in isolated cases and by rare excep- 

 tion. Nowhere else had such a work been under- 

 taken on a comprehensive scale even with a few 

 species of plants. 



The application of the method to thousands of 

 species, involving countless myriads of individ- 

 uals, was an absolute novelty. 



Scientific Results 



The results of the work in their bearings on 

 scientific theory may be briefly summarized. 



These experiments demonstrated that the bar- 

 riers between natural species are much more 

 fragile than had been almost universally sup- 

 posed. 



They showed that not only may we produce 

 fertile hybrids between a very large number of 

 related species of plants, but that equally fertile 

 hybrids may often be produced by the union of 

 species that are so widely separated as to be 

 classified in different genera. 



They have proved that the first- generation 

 hybrids may resemble one parent or the other 

 pretty closely or may show a blending of quali- 



