ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS. 



I. — On Hybridization amongst Vegetables. By the Hon. and 

 Very Rev. William Herbert, LL.D., Dean of Manchester. 

 Part the First. 



(Communicated Oct. 14, 1846.) 



Having been urged to prepare a paper for the Journal of the 

 Horticultural Society, embodying- whatever is known to me con- 

 cerning the cross-breeding of vegetables — although I am not 

 aware that I can add much to what I have already laid before 

 the public on this mysterious subject — in compliance with re- 

 peated requests, I will try to arrange what seems to me ascer- 

 tained, and to point out some of the results, and some of the 

 difficulties and uncertainties that require further investigation. 

 When I first asserted that it was preposterous to suppose all the 

 existing forms of vegetables, according to the subdivision of our 

 botanical arrangement, to have been so specially created by the 

 Almighty, and that I suspected the various forms of animal life 

 to have also branched out from a smaller number of original 

 types, I was attacked by some as a person who was minishing 

 from, instead of attributing infinity to, the power and wisdom 

 of God. I trust that the progress of useful knowledge has nearly 

 dissipated such absurd calumnies ; and that the labours of geolo- 

 gists have shown that, as the Allwise, who fills the unlimited ex- 

 panse of universal space, speaks to us of his hands and handy- 

 work as if He were an artificer of our own definite dimensions, 

 so the Scriptures detail the immense operations of ages before 

 the creation of man by expressions conformable to our petty 

 space of life— revealing in simple terms a few great truths, gra- 

 dually and duly confirmed by the progress of scientific investi- 

 gation, which brings to light the primordial remains that prove 

 the succession of events, while it adds immeasurably to the great- 

 ness and majesty both of the operations themselves and of the 

 means by which they have been effected, showing that they were 

 not comprised within a diurnal week of our terrestrial life, but 

 filled a gigantic page in the great volume of antecedent time. 

 We must learn to understand the true force of the words of 

 Scripture, and not derogate from the greatness of God by re- 

 ducing it to the compass of our narrow conceptions. I have 

 entered at length into that consideration in a late publication 

 entitled ' The Christian,' and shall not now revert to the 

 subject. 



VOL. II. B 



