6 HYBRIDISM. [Chap. IX. 



from the anthers of another flower, as from the anthers 

 of the flower itself which is to be fertilised ; so that a 

 cross between two flowers, though probably often on the 

 same plant, would be thus effected. Moreover, when- 

 ever complicated experiments are in progress, so careful 

 an observer as Gartner would have castrated his 

 hybrids, and this would have ensured in each generation 

 a cross with pollen from a distinct flower, either from 

 the same plant or from another plant of the same hybrid 

 nature. And thus, the strange fact of an increase of fer- 

 tility in the successive generations of artificially fertilised 

 hybrids, in contrast with those spontaneously self- 

 fertilised, may, as I believe, be accounted for by too close 

 interbreeding having been avoided. 



Now let us turn to the results arrived at by a third 

 most experienced hybridiser, namely, the Hon. and Eev. 

 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 experimented on some of the very 

 same species as did Gartner. The difference in their 

 results may, I think, be in part accounted for by 

 Herbert's great horticultural skill, and by his having 

 hot-houses 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 Crinurn 

 capense fertilised by C. revolutum produced a plant, 

 which I never saw to occur in a case of its natural 

 fecundation." So that here we have perfect or even 

 more than commonly perfect fertility, in a first cross 

 between two distinct species. 



This case of the Crinum leads me to refer to a 



