Moreover, as
Gartner repeatedly crossed some forms, such as the common red and blue
pimpernels (Anagallis arvensis and coerulea), which the best botanists rank
as varieties, and found them absolutely sterile, we may doubt whether many
species are really so sterile, when intercrossed, as he believed.
It is certain, on the one hand, that the sterility of various species when
crossed is so different in degree and graduates away so insensibly, and, on
the other hand, that the fertility of pure species is so easily affected by
various circumstances, that for all practical purposes it is most difficult
to say where perfect fertility ends and sterility begins. I think no
better evidence of this can be required than that the two most experienced
observers who have ever lived, namely Kolreuter and Gartner, arrived at
diametrically opposite conclusions in regard to some of the very same
forms. It is also most instructive to compare--but I have not space here
to enter on details--the evidence advanced by our best botanists on the
question whether certain doubtful forms should be ranked as species or
varieties, with the evidence from fertility adduced by different
hybridisers, or by the same observer from experiments made during different
years. It can thus be shown that neither sterility nor fertility affords
any certain distinction between species and varieties. The evidence from
this source graduates away, and is doubtful in the same degree as is the
evidence derived from other constitutional and structural differences.
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