THE SPECIES AND HYBRIDS OF MENTHA 173 
their 08 number and choice of materials that we can com- 
mand e French forms, it will be exclusively to these—at 
least until. a new alana we intend to restrict the 
following generalizations. 
ntha ruin. and e sylvestris hybridize persistently 
wherever they are found in the ¢ 7 or neighbourhood of each 
other; to this rule, f aio nce, we per t to discover an exneption, 
and the individual plants resulting from the cross often exist in such 
abundance that they might be supposed to represent the legitimate 
dominant species. ‘This explains how botanists (floristes) of the 
status of Fries and Godron believed they saw in the hybrid the 
type of geste sylvestris, and attached placed forms of this species 
under M, viridis as a Variety canescens. bee capital error, as we 
long ago oat nted out,* was the source of an enigma in the classi- 
fication of the Mints of the group Spicate that remained unsolved 
for nearly a century. 
2. M. aquatica and M. arvensis cross with the same facility and 
equal persistence wherever they are met with. This group 0 
dre 
We it abiniedd: experimentally the hybrids of these two 
categorie 
viridis, rarer in France in a spontaneous state than its 
congeners, oes in different combinations, mostly horticultural in 
orl portion of its characteristics is found in M. rubra, M. 
pricier M, paiie &e 
4. Crosses between M. aquatica and M. rotundifolia or M. 
sylvestris are infrequent. Certain incontestable examples can, how- 
ever, be cited: M. Mawimilianea, Schultzii, Mauponit, pubescens, 
nepetoides mee &e., nearly all of them falling under our division 
of Spicate petiolate 
5. Hybrids of pe formula arvensis-rotundifolia are Scarce, and 
often wanting in stability. We have found several varieties in the 
neighbourhood of Provi 
. Finally, with the exception of a doubtful form, of garden 
origin, we do not, up to esent, know any aut thentic example 
of spontaneous byhcidinason between arvensis and sylvestris in 
— 
exceed the scope of this brief sonitaanteutictl To sum amon 
the Sikasnivs of hybrids here laid down, the two first ‘hive’s a 
* Bull. Soc. Bot. de France, xxv. 141. 
t Many hybrids of the formula arvensis-sylvestris have been discovered in 
Central Europe. 
