AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 529 



Linnseus, in 1761, admitted the hybridization of jDlants; but 

 in liis communication to the Academy of Sciences of Russia, ho 

 pretended that lie had produced a hybrid by fecundating a Trago- 

 fogon porrifclius (an aster), witli tlie pollen of the Tragopogon 

 pratensis, and he laid it down as a principle that in hybrids the 

 interior parts of the plant and its fructification, resembled the 

 mother, while the exterior reproduced the form of the father. 

 But the plants from those seeds which he sent to St. Petersburg!! 

 with his memoir, were submitted to the examination of Kcelru- 

 ter, who recognized in them not as hybrids, but retrogade. Other 

 naturalists have, by experiments, confirmed those of Kcelruter, 

 and enlarged that circle of knowledge. Thus, Sageret extended 

 the crossings to the cucurbitacese, his object in doing it w^as purely 

 scientific, but it had the merit of aiding in awakening France to 

 the crossing of plants. 



Knight, President of the London Horticultural Society, no 

 sooner obtained the knowledge of Kcelruter's success, than he 

 repeated and verified his experiments. He obtained, in that way, 

 new varieties of fruit trees, some of them extremely remarkable. 

 Besides he established the fact that hybrids from crossing two 

 species, are incapable of fecundation by themselves; but those 

 from two varieties of one and the same species, are as fruitful as 

 their parents were; nevertheless, Knight found no partizans for 

 his doctrine then either in England and much less on the Conti- 

 nent. 



W. Herbert (who died in 1817) cultivated a greater number 

 of the Amaryllises, and observed that their seeds sometimes pro- 

 duced plants exactly intermediate of the two which were regarded 

 as two difierent species. 



In Germany, after the discoveries of Kcelruter, there were few 

 practical hybridizers, till Schelver, in 1812, laid down this prin- 

 ciple : " that animals have ditference of sex, but not plants." The 

 polemics which followed this assertion caused the Academy of 

 Sciences of Berlin, to propose, in 1819, a prize to settle that ques- 

 tion, viz : " Is there cross fecundation in the vegetable king- 

 dom ? " No memoir having arrived at the time fixed for them, 

 the question was continued over for two years, and the premium 

 was doubled. At the time appointed only one presented himself, 

 that was A. F. Wiegmann, he obtained only one-half of thepre- 

 mium. Since that two very estimable and extensive memoirs on 

 the subject have been published by C. F. G£ertner — the fii'st in 



[Am. Inst.] 34 



