( 91 ) 



RELATIONSHIP OF SPECIES. 

 By. H. Panton. 



(Continued from p. 35.) 



Pieferring to the cases of hybrids which (as Mr. Finn 

 mentions) are hard to get, one might point out these may be 

 hard to obtain in two ways, viz. : — either that it is difficult to get 

 the parents to copulate, although conception is general when 

 this does occur, or that although copulation is frequent no 

 conception takes place. This point ought not to be lost sight of. 

 Further, it has always seemed to me that it is far harder to get 

 " uncongenial " hybrids (that is, sterile ones or aganesists) 

 amongst lower animals than in the higher forms. 



These sterile hybrids, I have noticed, appear to me to be the 

 results of what one might term true miscegenation, that is, the 

 parents show in general little natural liking for each other, and 

 thus I take it that in lower forms with small brain capacity, 

 intelligence as suggestive and incitant to copulation is wanting 

 (and this intelligence seems largely operative in the production 

 of horse and ass hybrids), and that therefore copulation is much 

 rarer than in the higher forms. 



Arguing by the above table of hybrids and congeneric habits, 

 a hybrid, the parents of which mate readily, should be fertile, 

 or again, when they show aversion or indifference, as happens 

 where their habits are not congeneric, we might look for a 

 sterile hybrid, and this is generally the case. I can conceive no 

 explanation of this other than gradual evolutionary divergence 

 of germ-plasm. It is suggested by certain authorities that in 

 cases of infertility the physiological unit may be divergent or in 

 dissimilar architectural multiples, and thus unable to combine; 

 be this as it may (and we will refer to it later), it seems to me 

 that it is always possible for the germ-plasm and outward form 

 to run away from each other, i. e., there being more divergence 



