BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. 165 
longiflorum, L. Canadense, L. tenuifolium, or L. umbellatum. Yet 
the converse does not always hold true, for several of these last-named 
species will bear seed when fertilized with the pollen of L. speciosum. 
A great number of subtile influences may modify the results of ex- 
periments in hybridization; yet those described above were so various, 
and extended over so many years, that the general facts to which they 
point may, I think, be regarded as assured. An eminent botanist has 
suggested to me that the tenacity with which lilies fertilized by lilies 
of other species retain their characteristics unchanged, may be ex- 
plained by supposing that the offspring are really no hybrids at all, 
but results of parthenogenesis, that curious phenomenon which some- 
times occurs in the lower orders of animals, and by which a single im- 
pregnation continues to take effect in several successive generations ; 
in other words, that a lily of which the flower was fertilized in any 
one year by its own pollen may bear seed in the next year without 
being fertilized again. There are two good reasons for believing that 
parthenogenesis had nothing to do with the cases in question. In the 
first place, some of the lilies subjected to experiment were young 
plants that had never bloomed before, and consequently could not have 
been fertilized before. In the next place, every species fertilized by me 
with the pollen of another species showed, with the single exception 
of L. superbum, evidence of hybridity, which, though slight, was con- 
vincing. This evidence consisted in markings of the stem resembling 
those of the male parent, in a changed color of anthers, also resembling 
that of the male, and in the frequent occurrence of abortion in both 
anthers and pistils, with consequent sterility. That the seedlings 
were really hybrids, there can be no reasonable doubt, though nobody 
would have suspected it from casual observation. The conclusion is 
that lilies, or at least the principal species of the genus, when hybri- 
dized, produce offspring which show the features of the male parent 
very slightly or only in exceptional’ cases. ‘These exceptional cases 
are, nevertheless, so remarkable at times, that the rarity of their occur- 
rence ought not to discourage the hybridist. 
