250 HYBRIDISM. Chap. VIII. 



Rev. W. Herbert. He is as emphatic in his conclusion 

 that some hybrids are perfectly fertile — as fertile as the 

 pure parent-species — as are Kolreuter and Gartner that 

 some degree of sterility between distinct species is a 

 universal law of nature. He experimentised on some 

 of the very same species as did Gartner. The differ- 

 ence in their results may, I think, be in part ac- 

 counted for by Herbert's great horticultural skill, and 

 by his having hothouses at his command. Of his many 

 important statements I will here give only a single 

 one as an example, namely, that " every ovule in a 

 pod of Crinum capense fertilised by C. revolutum pro- 

 duced a plant, which (he says) I never saw to occur in 

 a case of its natural fecundation." So that we here 

 have perfect, or even more than commonly perfect, fer- 

 tility in a first cross between two distinct species. 



This case of the Crinum leads me to refer to a most 

 singular fact, namely, that there are individual plants, 

 as with certain species of Lobelia, and with all the 

 species of the genus Hippeastrum, which can be far more 

 easily fertilised by the pollen of another and distinct 

 species, than by their own pollen. For these plants 

 have been found to yield seed to the pollen of a distinct 

 species, though quite sterile with their own pollen, not- 

 withstanding that their own pollen was found to be per- 

 fectly good, for it fertilised distinct species. So that 

 certain individual plants and all the individuals of cer- 

 tain species can actually be hybridised much more 

 readily than they can be self-fertilised ! For instance, 

 a bulb of Hippeastrum aulicum produced four flowers ; 

 three were fertilised by Herbert with their own pollen, 

 and the fourth was subsequently fertilised by the pollen 

 of a compound hybrid descended from three other and 

 distinct species: the result was that "the ovaries of 

 the three first flowers soon ceased to grow, and after a 



