i88 Hybridism with Reference to the [April, 
The Rev. E. S. Dixon, quoted in the same work, remarks 
that “ those who have kept many different species of geese 
together well know what unaccountable attachments they 
are frequently forming, and that they are quite as likely to 
pair and rear young with individuals of a species apparently 
the most alien to themselves, as with their own stock.” 
Waterton (“Essays,” p. 400) mentions that a female 
Canada goose paired with a bernacle gander, and that they 
produced a brood. The hybrids which have been produced 
between different species of song-birds are, as every bird- 
fancier can testify, exceedingly numerous. 
In short, the second proposition of the Old School has 
literally not a leg to stand upon, if it claims to rank as a 
general truth. It can be merely tolerated in the following 
very modest form : — “ If animals of different species copu- 
late, some will produce viable young, and others not.” 
We come now to the last of the three propositions, which 
asserts that if the intercourse of a male and a female of 
different species produce young, the latter are barren. 
In refutation we will take first the case of the American 
bison and the domestic cow. According to Mr. J. A. Allen’s 
valuable monograph (“ History of the American Bison ”) it 
is distinctly shown that the bison bull interbreeds freely with 
the domestic cow, and that the half-breeds are fertile. This 
fa<5t is of the greater importance since the two animals be- 
long to distinct genera. 
We must not forget the case of the so-called “ leporides,” 
hybrids between the hare and the rabbit, the existence and 
the reproduction of which have been admitted in “ Cosmos 
les Mondes,” a paper assuredly free from any Evolutionist 
leanings. There is also no well-founded doubt that the 
blood of several distinct species of Canidae has been mingled 
to form the domestic dog. The Japanese lap-dog ( Drysodus 
pravus), though differing generically from the common dog, 
interbreeds with it freely. 
We come now to birds. That the hybrid between Tetrao 
urogallus and T. tetrix, above mentioned, is capable of repro- 
duction seems to be a necessary inference from its multipli- 
cation. But as I am not aware that any observer has 
actually seen a nest where one of these hybrids was either 
father or mother, I will not insist on this case. A far more 
important instance is that recorded by Mr. Seebohm in his 
“ Siberia in Asia,” and it is the more completely satisfactory 
because every possibility of human interference is absent. 
The carrion crow and the hoodie mate freely together. 
According to Mr. Seebohm, in the district of Yeniseisk 
