~ 38854 Botany. 75 
tween Gesneraceous plants of two genera, Gloxinia rubra and Sin- 
ningia guttata. These were fertile. Indeed, European florists 
have united many supposed genera in this order. Conservatories 
teem with them. The writer never saw a sterile one. lis is 
also true of Begonia. Large numbers of those in our conserva- 
tories are hybrids, all fertile. * * * * All our garden Gla- 
dioli are fertile. The original of these forms is a hybrid between 
Gladiolus cardinalis and G. floribundus. Our garden geraniums 
and pelargoniums are from many very distinct species, so distinct 
in appearance and general character that they might almost be 
regarded as distinct genera. Their ‘offspring are occasionally 
sterile, but with these very few exceptions are as fertile through 
many score of generations as the originals. * * * * The 
Cape heaths of our greenhouses—species of Erica—have remark- 
ably distinct forms among them, yet any of them hybridize freely 
and produce offspring as fertile as their parents. 2:8 ode 
dence for the fertility of hybrids) * * * The history of the 
grape in America is one of a long succession of fertile hybrids, 
though perhaps the distinctness of the species might be a ques- 
tion. There is such a regular gradation that no one can refer a 
form in every case to its proper species. Still, when we take the 
wild fox grape and compare it with the grape of European vine- 
yards, or a scuppernong and a fox grape, all will admit that in no 
sense can these be regarded as one species. Yet they all hybrid- 
ize, and the hybrids are fertile. Ati 
M. Naudin, a very energetic French experimenter with hybrid 
plants, gives as the results of his observations that never more 
than twenty-five per cent of hybrids were sterile, and of these 
numbers had fertile pollen ; but even this proportion may have 
had more to do with the climate or surroundings than with abso- 
lute sterility. In America, so far as the writer of this has had 
the opportunity to observe, there is no reason to believe there is 
any more sterility attached to hybrids than to ordinary plants.— 
The Independent. 
Tue YouncEer Scoot or Boranists—lIn a recent number of 
Nature Rev. Geo. Henslow spoke of the “evil effects of the 
younger school of botanists not recognizing the importance of 
first training students in a thorough course of practical and sys- 
tematic botany before proceeding to laboratory work.” To this 
W. T. Thistleton Dyer replies with some warmth: “I am afraid 
I am not wholly free from some responsibility for the proceedings 
of ‘the younger school of botanists,’ the effects of which he re- 
gards as evil. In the face of the successful revival in this country 
of many branches of botanical study which the younger school 
has effected, Iam emphatically of the opinion that these effects 
are the reverse of evil. I believe I was one of the first to organ- 
b 
