ON HYBRIDIZATION - AMONGST VEGETABLES. 



13 



capitulate the facts that seem to be ascertained. It is now forty 

 years since I began experiments on this subject, which have been, 

 not an employment, but an occasional source of amusement. My 

 original assertion was, that the genera of plants (rectifying in the 

 limitations and definitions thereof by botanists such things as 

 shall appear to require rectification) represent the several created 

 types of vegetables ; that such created types cannot properly 

 amalgamate ; and that, if a monster is at any time produced be- 

 tween them seminally, it cannot be seminal ly reproduced ; that 

 the species of botanists and the permanent local varieties are not 

 essentially different in their nature, but are variations induced by 

 causes more or less remote in the period of their operation, though 

 the features of their diversity may be severally more or less im- 

 portant, and that they differ from accidental varieties in the per- 

 manent habit of similar reproduction which they have acquired 

 from soil and climate, and tiiat often in a long succession of ages. 

 Those points appear to me now completely established, except- 

 ing that we cannot prove that even the genera did not branch 

 out from higher types, or in fact that the tribes or orders were 

 not the original genera, or kinds. In some genera we find that 

 all the species are capable of breeding together and producing a 

 fertile offspring : in Hippeastrum that they even prefer breeding 

 with each other ; in some genera that many species will cross 

 together, and some have as yet refused to cross ; in some, that 

 the cross-bred plants are abundantly fertile ; in some obstinately 

 sterile ; in some individuals capable of fertilization by the pollen 

 of another, and not by its own ; in some cases that two individuals 

 will breed freely with a third, and not with each other. 



To what results do those facts lead us? The promiscuous 

 blending of the species of any one genus proves that the sterility 

 or impediment to intermixture does not depend upon any original 

 created diversity of species — i. e. that the thing called a species 

 by botanists is not the created type ; and, if the fertility does not 

 depend upon that, the various results must depend upon the want 

 of equal affinity amongst the several species of each respective 

 genus — that is to say, on a wider departure from the common 

 type in the several varieties of one genus than in those of another. 

 We cannot suppose anything so preposterous as that the Almighty 

 would have created so many species of a genus, with permission, 

 when approached together by the hand of man, to confound their 

 generations, and so many others under a peremptory prohibition 

 to do so. Therefore, if by a genus we mean anything definite, 

 anything that has a real and natural character, and not merely a 

 fanciful and capricious denomination, whatever be the nature of 

 the individuality which absolutely and essentially separates one 

 genus from the rest of the creation, must also exist in every 



