<Note in original.> Oxalis and Gentian. <In Gentians blue,
yellow and reddish colours occur. In Oxalis yellow, purple, violet
and pink.>

_External characters of Hybrids and Mongrels._

There is, however, as it appears to me, a more important method of
comparison between species and races, namely the character of the
offspring{263} when species are crossed and when races are crossed: I
believe, in no one respect, except in sterility, is there any
difference. It would, I think, be a marvellous fact, if species have
been formed by distinct acts of creation, that they should act upon each
other in uniting, like races descended from a common stock. In the first
place, by repeated crossing one species can absorb and wholly obliterate
the characters of another, or of several other species, in the same
manner as one race will absorb by crossing another race. Marvellous,
that one act of creation should absorb another or even several acts of
creation! The offspring of species, that is hybrids, and the offspring
of races, that is mongrels, resemble each other in being either
intermediate in character (as is most frequent in hybrids) or in
resembling sometimes closely one and sometimes the other parent; in both
the offspring produced by the same act of conception sometimes differ in
their degree of resemblance; both hybrids and mongrels sometimes retain
a certain part or organ very like that of either parent, both, as we
have seen, become in succeeding generations variable; and this tendency
to vary can be transmitted by both; in both for many generations there
is a strong tendency to reversion to their ancestral form. In the case
of a hybrid laburnum and of a supposed mongrel vine different parts of
the same plants took after each of their two parents. In the hybrids
from some species, and in the mongrel of some races, the offspring
differ according as which of the two species, or of the two races, is
the father (as in the common mule and hinny) and which the mother. Some
races will breed together, which differ so greatly in size, that the dam
often perishes in labour; so it is with some species when crossed; when
the dam of one species has borne offspring to the male of another
species, her succeeding offspring are sometimes stained (as in Lord
Morton's mare by the quagga, wonderful as the fact{264} is) by this
first cross; so agriculturists positively affirm is the case when a pig
or sheep of one breed has produced