250 
HYBKIDISM. 
Chap. VIII. 
Bev. W. Herbert. He is as emphatic in his conclusion 
that some hybrids are perfectly fertile—as fertile as the 
pure parent-species—as are Kolreuter and Gartner that 
some degree of sterility between distinct species is a 
universal law of nature. He experimentised on some 
of the very same species as did Gartner. The differ¬ 
ence in their results may, I think, be in part ac¬ 
counted for by Herbert’s great horticultural skill, and 
by his having hothouses at his command. Of his many 
important statements I will here give only a single 
one as an example, namely, that every ovule in a 
pod of Crinum capense fertilised by C. revolutum pro¬ 
duced a plant, which (he says) I never saw to occur in 
a case of its natural fecundation.” So that we here 
have perfect, or even more than commonly perfect, fer¬ 
tility in a first cross between two distinct species. 
This case of the Crinum leads me to refer to a most 
singular fact, namely, that there are individual plants 
of certain species of Lobelia and of some other genera, 
which can be far more easily fertilised by the pollen of 
another and distinct species, than by their own pollen; 
and all the individuals of nearly all the species ofiHip- 
peastram seem to be in this predicament. For these 
plants have been found to yield seed to the pollen 
of a distinct species, though quite sterile with their 
own pollen, notwithstanding that their own pollen 
was found to be perfectly good, for it fertilised dis¬ 
tinct species. So that certain individual plants and 
all the individuals of certain species can actually be 
hybridised much more readily than they can be self- 
fertilised ! For instance, a bulb of Hippeastrum au- 
licum produced four flowers ; three were fertilised by 
Herbert with their own pollen, and the fourth was 
subsequently fertilised by the pollen of a compound 
hybrid descended from three other and distinct spe- 
