12 Vegetable Hybrids and their Progeny. 



Any one ignorant of their origin must have taken them for a 

 new species/' They were all of the violet series, with brown 

 stems, while the parent species had white flowers and green 

 stems. 



In 1864, M. Naudin made a fresh sowing of D. Icevi-ferox, 

 and feroci-lcevis, and by side of them D.ferox and D. Icevis of 

 pure race. The result was, that thirty-six new specimens of 

 D. Icevis-ferox, and thirty-nine of D . feroci-lcevis reproduced the 

 identical characters of the former year, brown stalks, violet 

 flowers, and spinous fruits. He noticed that at the com- 

 mencement of germination the little stem of D. ferox 

 of pure race was purple, so that this colour seen in the 

 hybrid stems was apparently derived from that species. " All 

 these hybrids, though sterile in the first six or seven dicho- 

 tomies, were fertile in those following. Their seed sown last 

 spring, gave, in the second generation, nineteen specimens of 

 D. feroci-lcevis, and twenty-six of Icevi-ferox. The two lots 

 still resembled each other, but by a character the very op- 

 posite of that which was most salient in the preceding genera- 

 tion. The great uniformity then remarkable was succeeded by 

 a surprising diversity of patterns; so that out of forty- five 

 plants, composing the two lots, no two could be found that 

 were exactly alike." They differed in all particulars. One lot, 

 however, of Icevi-ferox went back to the type of D. Icevis, 

 except that the lower part of the stem was purple. In very 

 few was a slight resemblance to D. ferox noticeable, most being 

 more like D. Stramonium and D. gueroifolium. " Some had 

 white flowers and green stems, either all , green, or with purple 

 at the base ; others had violet flowers of different tones, and 

 stems more or less brown ; sometimes even purple, passing 

 into black, as in D. tatula, which is the most perfect type of 

 the violet series. The fruits were of all sizes, from a filbert to 

 a large nut ; and of these fruits some were very spinous, others 

 only covered with tubercles, or nearly destitute of spines. 

 Some individuals fructified in the first dichotomy, others only 

 in the last, and some produced no fruit at all. In fine, the 

 forty-four plants, constituting these two lots, were all indi- 

 vidual varieties, as if the tie binding them to specific types 

 were broken, and their growth had run wild in all directions." 



M. Naudin then mentions a case of hybrid Marvel of Peru, 

 in which the second generation differed both from the parents 

 and from the first. 



In 1863 and 1864, he watched the sixth and seventh gene- 

 ration of a hybrid Linaria purpureo-vulgaris which he had kept 

 for many years. A good many went back, some completely, 

 some partially, to the L. vulgaris, with yellow flowers, and a 

 smaller number to L. purpurea, with purple flowers. The 



