CHAPTER IX.
HYBRIDISM.
Distinction between the sterility of first crosses and of hybrids --
Sterility various in degree, not universal, affected by close
interbreeding, removed by domestication -- Laws governing the sterility of
hybrids -- Sterility not a special endowment, but incidental on other
differences, not accumulated by natural selection -- Causes of the
sterility of first crosses and of hybrids -- Parallelism between the
effects of changed conditions of life and of crossing -- Dimorphism and
trimorphism -- Fertility of varieties when crossed and of their mongrel
offspring not universal -- Hybrids and mongrels compared independently of
their fertility -- Summary.
The view commonly entertained by naturalists is that species, when
intercrossed, have been specially endowed with sterility, in order to
prevent their confusion. This view certainly seems at first highly
probable, for species living together could hardly have been kept distinct
had they been capable of freely crossing. The subject is in many ways
important for us, more especially as the sterility of species when first
crossed, and that of their hybrid offspring, cannot have been acquired, as
I shall show, by the preservation of successive profitable degrees of
sterility. It is an incidental result of differences in the reproductive
systems of the parent-species.
In treating this subject, two classes of facts, to a large extent
fundamentally different, have generally been confounded; namely, the
sterility of species when first crossed, and the sterility of the hybrids
produced from them.
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