314 GEOEGE JOHN EOMANES i893 



To W. T. TMselton-Dyer, Esq. 



94 St. Aldate's, Oxford : September 15, 1893. 



Dear Dyer, — Many thanks for your letter with 

 enclosures. As you say, there does not seem to be 

 anything remarkable about the hybrid ; but I am 

 glad to see that both its parent species are well 

 marked and presumably both of mountain origin. 

 The case thus well accords with my views, as ex- 

 plained in my previous letters. I met with many 

 such (i.e. hybrids between originally isolated species) 

 in Madeira and the Canaries. 



There are none so bhnd as those who will not see. 

 Where can your powers of ' observation ' have been 

 when you can still remark that I ignore the facts of 

 hybridisation? I can only repeat that from the 

 first I have regarded them as evidence of the utmost 

 importance as establishing a highly general correla- 

 tion between separate origin of alhed species and 

 absence of cross-sterility. In fact, for the last five 

 years I have had experiments going on in my Alpine 

 garden, which I helped in founding for the very pur- 

 pose of inquiring into this matter. And Focke, with 

 whom I have been in correspondence from the first, 

 and who does understand the theory, writes that in 

 his opinion it will ' solve the whole mystery ' of 

 natural hybridisation in relation to artificial. 



Since my last letter to you I have been at death's 

 door. On July 11, I was struck down by paralysis 

 of the left side, and am now a wreck. Not the least 

 of my sorrow is that I fear I shall have to leave the 

 verification of phys. sel. to other hands in larger mea- 



