Cross- Breeding and Hybridizing. 23 



in the parentage of hybrids, for I shall thereby not only call your attention 

 to what I believe to be an error, but shall also find the opportunity to illus- 

 trate still further the entanglements of hybridization. It was held by cer- 

 tain early observers, of whom the great Linnaeus was one, that the female 

 parent determines the constitution of the hybrid, while the male parent gives 

 the external attributes, as form, size and color. The accumulated experience 

 of nearly a century and a half appears to contradict this proposition, and 

 Focke, who has recently gone over the whole ground, positively declares 

 that it is untrue. There are instances, to be sure, in which this old idea is 

 affirmed, but there are others in which it is contradicted. The truth appears 

 to be this, that the* parent of greater strength or virility makes the stronger 

 impression upon the hybrids, whether it is the staminate or pistillate parent, 

 and it appears to be equally true that it is usually impossible to determine 

 beforehand which parent is the stronger. It is certain that strength does 

 not lie in size, neither in the high development of any character. It appears 

 to be more particularly associated with what we call fixity or stability of 

 character, or a tendency towards invariability. This has been well illus- 

 trated in my own experiments with squashes, gourds and pumpkins. The 

 common little pear-shaped gourd will impress itself more strongly upon 

 crosses than any of the edible squashes and pumpkins with which it will 

 effect a cross, whether it is used as a male or female parent. Even the im- 

 posing and ubiquitous great field-pumpkin which every New Englander asso- 

 ciates with pies, is overpowered by the little gourd. Seeds from a large and 

 sleek pumpkin which had been fertilized by gourd-pollen produced gourds 

 and small hard-shelled globular fruits which were entirely inedible. A more 

 interesting experiment has been made between the handsome green-striped 

 - Bergen fall squash and the little pear-gourd. Several flowers of the gourd 

 were pollinated by the Bergen in 1889. The fruits raised from these seeds 

 in 1890 were remarkably gourd-like. Some of these crosses were pollinated 

 again in 1890 by the Bergen and the seeds were sown in 1891. Here, then, 

 were crosses into which the gourd had gone once and the Bergen twice, and 

 both the parents are to all appearances equally fixed, the difference in 

 strength, if any, attaching rather to the Bergen. Now the crop of 1891 

 still carried pronounced characters of the gourd. Even in the fruits which 

 most resembled the Bergen, the shells were almost flinty hard and the 

 flesh, even when thick and tender, was bitter. Some of the fruits looked so 

 much like the Bergen that I was led to think that the gourd had largely dis- 

 appeared. The very hard, but thin paper-like shell which the gourd had 

 laid over the thick yellow flesh of the Bergen, I thought might serve a useful 

 purpose and make the squash a better keeper. And I found that it was a 

 great protection, for the squash could stand any amount of rough handling 



