This greater variability in mongrels than in hybrids does not seem at all
surprising. For the parents of mongrels are varieties, and mostly domestic
varieties (very few experiments having been tried on natural varieties),
and this implies that there has been recent variability; which would often
continue and would augment that arising from the act of crossing. The
slight variability of hybrids in the first generation, in contrast with
that in the succeeding generations, is a curious fact and deserves
attention. For it bears on the view which I have taken of one of the
causes of ordinary variability; namely, that the reproductive system, from
being eminently sensitive to changed conditions of life, fails under these
circumstances to perform its proper function of producing offspring closely
similar in all respects to the parent-form. Now, hybrids in the first
generation are descended from species (excluding those long cultivated)
which have not had their reproductive systems in any way affected, and they
are not variable; but hybrids themselves have their reproductive systems
seriously affected, and their descendants are highly variable.
But to return to our comparison of mongrels and hybrids: Gartner states
that mongrels are more liable than hybrids to revert to either parent form;
but this, if it be true, is certainly only a difference in degree.
Moreover, Gartner expressly states that the hybrids from long cultivated
plants are more subject to reversion than hybrids from species in their
natural state; and this probably explains the singular difference in the
results arrived at by different observers.
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