r itself which is to be fertilised; so that a cross
between two flowers, though probably 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 the 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 the increase
of fertility in the successive generations of ARTIFICIALLY FERTILISED
hybrids may, I believe, be accounted for by close interbreeding having
been avoided.

Now let us turn to the results arrived at by the third most experienced
hybridiser, namely, the Honourable and Reverend 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. He experimentised on some of the very same species as did
Gartner. The difference in their results may, I think, be in part
accounted for by Herbert's great horticultural skill, and by his having
hothouses at his command. Of his many important statements I will here
give only a single one as an example, namely, that "every ovule in a pod
of Crinum capense fertilised by C. revolutum produced a plant, which
(he says) I never saw to occur in a case of its natural fecundation." So
that we here have perfect, or even more than commonly perfect, fertility
in a first cross between two distinct species.

This case of the Crinum leads me to refer to a most singular fact,
namely, that there are individual plants, as with certain species of
Lobelia, and with all the species of the genus Hippeastrum, which can
be far more easily fertilised by the pollen of another and distinct
species, than by their own pollen. For these plants have been found to
yield seed to the pollen of a distinct species, though quite sterile
with their own pollen, notwithstanding that their own pollen was found
to be perfectly good, for it fertilised distinct species. So that
certain individual plants and all the individuals of certain species
can actually be hybridised much more readily than they can be
self-fertilised! For instance, a bulb of Hippeastrum aulicum produced
four flowers; three were fertilised by Herbert with their own pollen,
and the fourth was subsequently fertilised by