ON HYBRIDIZATION AMONGST VEGETABLES. 



101 



a bud formed from that compound cell would derive qualities 

 from both species, but qualities less fixed and innate than those 

 which are derived from generative union. This has been looked 

 upon as a speculation, but I consider it nearly amounting to a 

 certainty, because I think that the consequence is necessary, and 

 that the phenomena cannot be accounted for in any other man- 

 ner ; and nothing of the sort has occurred to any known mule 

 production, vegetable or animal. Since that time my brother's 

 shrub has put out many of the large-leaved yellow branches 

 and of the small branches, and they are fertile. It occurred to 

 me that it would be a confirmation of my view, if the reverted 

 branches of each kind should keep to opposite sides of the stem ; 

 and on examination that proved to be decidedly the case. 

 Whether that circumstance occurs elsewhere or not, I do not 

 know ; but it looks as if one side of the wood adopted the 

 character of one half of the original cell, and the opposite side 

 the other character. I think that clever gardeners might thus 

 obtain crosses between plants which will not intermix seminally. 

 The olive and privet might be tried with hope of success ; for 

 the privet, when the olive is grafted upon it, is very persevering 

 in throwing shoots from the old wood. A long slice of privet 

 should be inarched on the olive with a very sharp and clean cut of 

 both the woods, and then teized by rubbing off the buds, till it 

 breaks on the exact suture. Of course many failures must be 

 expected before a bud will be obtained from a compound cell ; 

 but I think, with perseverance, it will be produced ; perhaps 

 most easily by uniting half of two young stems of equal bulk 

 from just above the root upwards. Let us, however, pause 

 to reflect on this phenomenon, whatever be the mode of its 

 operation. Here we have not only two plants, so very dissimilar 

 as the almost arborescent yellow laburnum, and the weak, humble, 

 small-leaved, purple-flowered Cytisus purpureus, produced from 

 the seed of the same individual ; but, if we strike cuttings 

 from the two varying branches, we have the individual plant 

 itself actually resolved into its elements, and those perfectly 

 separated. Can we for a moment hold, after contemplating 

 that fact, that the Almighty certainly created those two plants 

 distinct, and allowed them to become, from two individual kinds, 

 one ; and from one be resolved again into two ? Have we any 

 analogy in the vegetable or animal kingdom that can warrant 

 such an extraordinary doctrine? and is not the plain inference, 

 that they were one individual kind when they proceeded from 

 the Creator, and are so still, though diversified in appearance ? 

 If two plants so dissimilar are admitted to have so diverged, 

 the like course of change must be attributed to other genera 

 also ; for I cannot think it will be shown that those two are by 



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