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. He experimented 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 I never saw to occur in a case of its natural fecundation.” So that here we have perfect, or even more than commonly perfect fertility, in a first cross between two distinct species.
717