420 Scientific Intelligence. 



since close-breeding or continued self-fertilization tends to sterility, while 

 wider breeding is recuperative. We leave it to Mr. Darwin's sagacity to 

 ascertain the end in the opposite case, noting that here the most un- 

 doubted close-fertilization for indefinite generations shows no apparent 

 tendency towards sterility, but rather the contrary. 



From another point of view which we are accustomed to take, how- 

 ever, we may suppose that, as one result the cross-fertilization must needs 

 be to keep down variation by repeated blendings, so the design of close- 

 fertilizatioQ may be to allow and to favor the perpetuation of varieties. 

 Self-fertilization, without selection, being just the condition which should 

 most favor both the multiplication of new varieties and their preserva- 

 tion. That such would be the operation (as long ago expounded in 

 this Journal, vols, xvii and xix) appears to us so clear, that we were 

 somewhat surprised at finding that the reviewer of Darwin's Primula- 

 paper in the Natural History Review (ii, p. 238) regards the separation 

 of sexes, and therefore cross-fertilization, as favoiing variation, and self- 

 fertilization as necessarily inimical to it. This probably comes from not 

 considering that while close-breeding tends to keep a given form true- 

 in virtue of the ordinary likeness of offspring to parents— it equally and 

 in the same way tends to perpetuate a variation once originated from that 

 form, and also, along with selection (natural or artificial), to educe and 

 further develope or confirm said variety. On the other hand, free cross- 

 breeding of incipient varieties inter se and with their original types is 

 just the way to blend all together, to repress all salient characteristics as 

 fast as the mysterious process of variation originates them, and fuse the 

 whole into a homogeneous form. 



We will also remark (in reference to p. 236, line 31, and p. 238, line 

 3 et seq. of the above mentioned Review) that the Chestnut does exhibit 

 manifest rudiments of stamens in its pistillate flowers ; also that, on 

 morphological grounds, we should look upon hermaphroditism, rather 

 than the contrary, as the normal or primary condition of flowers, and 

 enquire how and why so many became diclinous, rather than "how and 

 why they ever became hermaphrodite." Forms which are low in the 

 scale as respects morphological completeness may be high in the scale of 

 rank founded on specialization of structure and functions. a. g. 



2. Fertilization of Orchids through the Agency of Insects.— In our 

 notice of Mr. Darwin's charming new work, in the July number of this 

 Journal, we could not get beyond the first two chapters, relating to the 

 Ophrgdece, or the tribe to which the Orchises themselves belong. _ Those 

 of our readers who, appreciating the treat to which they were invited, 

 have been looking into our Orchideous flowers, will not be sorry to have 

 us resume the subject. 



In default of drawings from some of our own species, which we should 

 prefer if we had them, we borrow the cuts with which the author illus- 

 trates the two British species (Orchis mascula and O. pyramidalis) witb 

 the account of which Darwin's book, and our abstracts, commenced. 

 These figures should render those abstracts much more intelligible, ^he 

 small letters denote the same thing in ail the figures. 



