42 HYBRIDS AND MONGRELS COMPARED. [Chap. IX. 



V??*«*4-tftJiLe. results of several experiments made by 

 Solreuter. 



Such alone are the unimportant differences which 

 Gartner is able to point out between hybrid and mon- 

 grel plants. On the other hand, the degrees and kinds 

 of resemblance in mongrels and in hybrids to their 

 respective parents, more especially in hybrids pro- 

 duced from nearly related species, follow according to 

 Gartner the same laws. When two species are crossed, 

 one has sometimes a prepotent power of impressing 

 its likeness on the hybrid. So I believe it to be with 

 varieties of plants; and with animals one variety cer- 

 tainly often has this prepotent power over another 

 variety. Hybrid plants produced from a reciprocal cross, 

 generally resemble each other closely; and so it is with 

 mongrel plants from a reciprocal cross. Both hybrids 

 and mongrels can be reduced to either pure parent- 

 form, by repeated crosses in successive generations with 

 either parent. 



These several remarks are apparently applicable to 

 animals; but the subject is here much complicated, 

 partly owing to the existence of secondary sexual char- 

 acters; but more especially owing to prepotency in 

 transmitting likeness running more strongly in one sex 

 than in the other, both when one species is crossed with 

 another, and when one variety is crossed with another 

 variety. For instance, I think those authors are right 

 who maintain that the ass has a prepotent power over 

 the horse, so that both the mule and the hinny resemble 

 more closely the ass than the horse; but that the pre- 

 potency runs more strongly in the male than in the 

 female ass, so that the mule, which is the offspring of 

 the male ass and mare, is more like an ass, than is 



