Hybridity in Animals and Plants. 209 
i } ‘ 
pustulata, which, but for an accident, would) have been reared. 
Yet such junctions cannot destroy the distinctions of the primi- 
tive species, although it may give birth occasionally to hybrid 
broods; not barren, but capable of generating, for a while, others 
like themselves. Such, in all probability, are Coccinella annu- 
lata and C. fasciata. If these two had never existed, no Ento- 
mologist would have conceived that all the insects of this section 
. bipunctata, were of the same species! Wherefore it fol- 
lows that they are not.” t 
“ Practical entomologists well know that similar unions happen 
in other genera, but more especially in Cicada ; and from them 
arise occasionally a set of hybrid varieties, which still do not 
overturn the primitive distinctions of the original species whence 
they sprung; however difficult they may sometimes render the 
task of discriminating amongst such a set of mongrel productions. 
“It is even probable that two species of distinct sections may 
occasionally generate a race very different from both parents, yet 
resembling both, and not barren, as is usually the case with mules, 
but capable of procreating. And such a brood some hold to 
be a new and distinct species in the scale of nature—brought to 
ight by her own operations, and in the very same way that she 
has occasionally multiplied, and still continues to increase, the 
stupendous members of the vegetable kingdom.”* | 
larve produced from the union of C. tripunctata,and C:q¢ I~ 
Hysrip Priants. 
Dr. Prichard, as the result of extensive inquiry, informs us 
that the number of hybrid plants in the wild or uncultivated state, 
is about forty ; that a few of these have reproduced, but that the 
greater of them are sterile.t On the other hand, it is asserted 
by Shiek, that a multitude of plants produce specifical hybrids 
ia state of nature. 
There are innumerable instances, as every one knows, of crosses 
obtained from plants of different species of the same genera, even 
when brought from the most distant parts of the world, as the 
experiments of Kolrenter, Sagaret and Herbert abundantly testify. 
y- 
t only are these hybrids fertile, but in some instances their 
reproductiveness exceeds that of the parent plants, by multiplying 
hot only from the seed, but from roots, shoots and suckers. The 
intermixture is not confined. to particular species, but even the 
most dissimilar can be crossed. We think it unnecessary to give 
examples when the facts are available to every one ; and there- 
fore in respect to the blending of species among plants, the reader 
a Cl la Sl 
* Transy of the Entomological Soc. of London, i, pp- 267, 201. 
1 Researches, &c., i, p. 139. 
t Brande’s Dict. of Science, Art. Hybrid. 
SEconp Serizs, Vol. Ill, No. 8,—March, 1847. vad 
