SHORT NOTES AND QUERIES. 111 
only a the theory (may we not call it a law ?), that “ nature abhors 
self-fertilization," has been shown with any degree of cer- 
sem * be true, or of general application in = vegetable kingdom. © 
By far the greater number of facts adduced to pro e the een ‘of in- 
tercrossing between ame only go to prove a nece between 
pas 
great number of instances. In Composite, for mies althou 
stigma of any one floret in the capitulum cannot be fertilized by pollen 
from the anthers of the same floret, it is practically impossible but that 
it _— be fertilized by pollen from a neighbouring floret. So, too, in 
where insect agency is noel whenever a plant has more than 
one iom, and especially when the flowe re disposed near each other 
in the same inflorescence, an insect eid b sure to carry pollen from 
flower to flower before flying off to another plant. Mr. Darwin, with his’ 
usual candour, has noticed this objection with regard to £rees (Orig. Spec. 
ed. 5, p. 115), and admits that it is a valid objection to the theory 
of necessary aede between different plants, but thinks that 
ed, but are produce ced on the same tree, it by no means follows that 
intererossing between two individual trees is ensured thereby,—although, 
of course, in such cases, as Mr. Darwin remarks, there is a better chance 
of the pollen being occasionally earried from tree to tree. I do not think 
this chance is admissible as a proof of the theory that Lesern ges iste 
different plants is necess In dioicous nn s, of course, such inter- 
crossing is unavoidable, as also, to a greater or less legion. in ‘the dimor- 
phic and trimorphic plants, which Mr. vam and others have shown to 
be more or less functionally dioicous ; but among monoicous plants I do 
not remember to have noticed any instance in which the female flowers 
could not be fertilized, or were not apparently fertilized, by the male 
flowers on the same plant. With regard to the Hazel, for example, | 
may say that my observations entirely agree wi = those of Mr. Bennett 
— 77). It does not seem necessary | to assume that winter-flowering 
plants are specially co nstructed with a view of sel-fertlization; The only 
nnett (ix. 
374), = the Gorani | mentioned by Mr. Hart (supra, 25), is that the 
anthers were harging on at th ive 
there is no evidence that fertilization was the result, and, even if this 
were the case, the true explanation appears to me to be that given by Mr 
Hart, viz. that the pollen, not having been removed inse ô 
wise, the stamens had not withered at the time the pistil came to maturity. 
There are, 1 it. is true, instances of genuine but abnormal self-fertilization, 
as of plants in greenhouses and orchard-houses, and these must, I think, 
be explained in the same way.—FRED. I. WARNE 
