236 THE ORCHID REVIEW. 
due to the diminished power of the male element, as had previously been 
noticed by other observers. 
The stability of hybrids was a matter of great importance to the practical 
breeder, for if they did not breed true, or tended to revert to their ancestral 
species, the breeders’ work would be largely in vain, and the economic 
importance of hybrids would be considerably diminished. From a variety 
of observations, he believed that the popular idea that hybrids when 
self-fertilised reverted to one or other of the ancestral species was not 
founded in fact, and where such reversion had been noticed it may possibly 
have been due to the hybrid having been fertilised with the pollen of one 
of the ancestral species. 
The vigour of hybrids, and in some cases their precocity in flowering, 
had often been noticed, but this was probably largely due to out-crossing, 
as opposed to inbreeding, the one increasing their vigour abnormally, the 
other reducing it. 
The limits of crossing seemed to depend npon very complex causes, and 
was not always determined absolutely by systematic affinity or natural 
relationship. For example, species of different genera had been success- 
fully crossed, while all attempts to cross certain allied species in the 
same genus had only ended in failure. Even constitutional differences 
was not an absolute barrier, for annuals had been united with perennials, 
deciduous trees with evergreens, and plants from the tropics with those 
that reached the arctic circle. When the conditions of life were favourable, 
fertility seemed to depend on what might be termed the affinity of the 
germ plasms, and the limits of crossing could only be ascertained by actual 
experiment. It was encourging to find that with extended experiments the 
barriers were being pushed wider apart, and the main thing was to perserve 
and not be discouraged by failures. In some cases a cross had only been 
successful after many abortive attempts. The motto should be to try, UY 
again, and above all to keep precise records, both of successes and 
failures, which might prove to be of inestimable value to science. 
The second day’s proceedings were held in the Westminster Tow? 
Hall, the Rev. Professor Henslow, in the absence of Sir Michael Foster 
through illness, in the Chair. The opening remarks were brief, and were 
followed by papers, accompanied by lantern demonstrations by Mr. Herbert 
J - Webber, on “ The work of the United States Department of Agriculture 
in Plant Hybridisation,” and Dr. J. H. Wilson, F.R.S.E., on “« Hybrids of 
Passiflora, Albuca, Ribes, and Begonia.” These were very interesting, but 
occupied a large amount of time, so that less than an hour remained when 
pias se A-L.S., was called upon for his paper on “Hy mee 
© standpoint of systematic botany.” The author said that 
