346 
ON CROSSES AND 
bearing a small egg-shaped white fruit and a small flower 
and leaf, very different from the Cucumis melo, fertilized 
accidentally by its pollen, thus occasionally producing fruit 
of twice the natural size with red flesh. Lobelia speciosa is 
a cross between L. siphylitica and fulgens, yet it reproduces 
itself abundantly. 
The more these facts are considered, and the more they 
are multiplied, as they will be by the daily experiments of 
cultivators in other genera, the more strongly will my ori- 
ginal suggestions impress themselves upon every botanist, 
who will look on the subject without prejudice, that the 
genera of plants are the real natural divisions; that no plants 
which interbreed can belong to separate genera ; that any 
arrangement, which shall have parted such plants, must be 
revised ; that any discrimination between species and per- 
manent varieties of plants is artificial, capricious, and insig- 
nificant ; that the question which is perpetually agitated, 
whether such a wild plant is a new species or a variety of a 
known species, is waste of intellect on a point which is capa- 
ble of no precise definition, and that the only thing to be 
decided by the botanist in such cases is whether the plant is 
other than an accidental seedling, and whether there are 
features of sufficient dissimilarity to warrant a belief that 
they will be reproduced, and to make the plant deserve on 
that account to be distinguished by name amongst its fel- 
lows. The effect, therefore, of the system of crossing, as 
pursued by the cultivator, instead of confusing the labours 
of the botanist, will be to force him to study the truth, and 
take care that his arrangement and subdivisions are conform- 
able to the secret laws of nature ; and will onlv confound him 
when his views shall appear to have been superficial and in- 
accurate ; while on the other hand it will furnish him an 
irrefragable confirmation when they are based upon reality. 
To the cultivators of ornamental plants the facility of raising 
hybrid varieties affords an endless source of interest and 
amusement. He sees in the several species of each genus 
that he possesses the materials with which he must work, and 
he considers in what manner he can blend them to the best 
advantage, looking to the several gifts in which each excels, 
whether of hardiness to endure our seasons, of brilliancy in 
its colours, of delicacy in its markings, of fragrance, or sta- 
ture, or profusion of blossom, and he may anticipate with 
tolerable accuracy the probable aspect of the intermediate 
