The simplest case that may be given, is when an ordinary retrograde
variety is cultivated with the species to which it belongs. For
instance, if dwarfs are cultivated next to the taller type, or a white
variety next to the red or blue-flowering species, or thornless forms in
neighboring beds with the armed species. Bees and Bumble-bees,
butterflies and moths are seen flying from flower to flower, collecting
the honey and carrying pollen. I frequently saw them cross the limits of
the neighboring beds. Loaded with the pollen of the variety they visit
the flowers of the different species and impregnate the stigma with it.
And returning to the variety they bring about similar crosses in the
flowers of the latter. Hybrid seeds will develop in both cases and
become mixed with the crop. We now have to ask the question, what sort
of plants will arise from these hybrid seeds. As a general rule we may
state, first, that the hybrids of either form of cross are practically
the same, secondly that they are not intermediate, but that the
character of one parent prevails to the almost absolute exclusion of the
other and in the third place that the older character dominates the
younger.
[209] The hybrid offspring will therefore, in the main, have the
character of the species and be indistinguishable from it, or show only
such differences as escape ordinary observation.
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