I am strengthened in
this conviction by a remarkable statement repeatedly made by Gartner,
namely, that if even the less fertile hybrids be artificially fertilised
with hybrid pollen of the same kind, their fertility, notwithstanding the
frequent ill effects from manipulation, sometimes decidedly increases, and
goes on increasing. Now, in the process of artificial fertilisation,
pollen is as often taken by chance (as I know from my own experience) from
the anthers of another flower, as from the anthers of the flower itself
which is to be fertilised; so that a cross between two flowers, though
probably often on the same plant, would be thus effected. Moreover,
whenever complicated experiments are in progress, so careful an observer as
Gartner would have castrated his hybrids, and this would have insured in
each generation a cross with pollen from a distinct flower, either from the
same plant or from another plant of the same hybrid nature. And thus, the
strange fact of an increase of fertility in the successive generations of
ARTIFICIALLY FERTILISED hybrids, in contrast with those spontaneously self-
fertilised, may, as I believe, be accounted for by too close interbreeding
having been avoided.
Now let us turn to the results arrived at by a third most experienced
hybridiser, namely, the Hon. and Rev. 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.
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