252 OBSERVATIONS ON HYBRIDS. 



species will breed together, and I confidently expect they will, without 

 giving existence to mule plants, I shall not hesitate to pronounce these 

 plants of one and the same species; as I have done relatively to the 

 scarlet, the pine, and Chili strawberries. Botanists may nevertheless, if 

 they please, continue to call these transmutable plants, species ; but if 

 they do so, I think they should find some other term for such species as 

 are not transmutable, and which will either not breed together at all, or 

 which, breeding together, give existence to mule plants. I do not, how- 

 ever, feel any anxiety or wish to defend my own hypothetical opinions 

 upon this subject ; on the contrary, I shall be most happy to see them 

 proved erroneous ; and my chief object in addressing the present com- 

 munication to the Horticultural Society is to point out a circumstance 

 which is more favourable to Mr. Herberts opinions than any other 

 which has come under my observations. 



I sent to the Society, some years ago, a fruit which sprang from a seed 

 of the sweet almond and the pollen of a peach blossom, and which in every 

 respect presented the character of a perfectly melting peach. When the 

 tree which afforded that fruit first produced blossoms, I introduced into 

 them the pollen of another peach-tree, with the view' of obtaining more 

 improved varieties of the peach of this family, and the necessary prepara- 

 tion of such blossoms prevented my noticing an imperfection which I 

 have since observed in them. Little or no pollen is ever produced in 

 them ; and though the tree has borne well subsequently upon the open 

 wall, and has produced perfect seeds without any particular attention 

 being paid to it, I suspect that its blossoms have been fecundated by 

 those of some adjoining nectarine trees. Having, however, often observed 

 that varieties of the same acknowledged identical species, when one was 

 in a highly cultivated and the other in a perfectly wild state, did not 

 readily succeed when grafted upon each other, owing probably to the 

 very different qualities of their circulating fluids, I conceived it possible 

 that the same causes might have prevented a perfect union at once taking 

 place between the almond and peach tree. I therefore waited till I had 

 an opportunity of observing, in the last summer, the blossoms of a second 

 generation, which proved in every respect as imperfect as those of the 

 first tree, and, like those, afforded fruit and perfect seeds with the pollen 

 of an adjoining nectarine tree. This result, which I did not anticipate, 

 appears interesting ; but I hesitate in drawing, at present, any inferences 

 from it*. 



* Since the foregoing observations were addressed to the Horticultural Society, a tree which 

 sprang from a seed of a sweet almond and pollen of the early violet nectarine has produced a 

 profusion of perfectly well organised blossoms, with abundant pollen, after having, in the three 



