ad the elongated bulbous root and
smell of the leek.

The same botanist remarks, that vegetable hybrids, when not strictly
intermediate, more frequently approach the female than the male parent
species; _but they never exhibit characters foreign to both_. A re-cross
with one of the original stocks generally causes the mule plant to
revert towards that stock; but this is not always the case, the
offspring sometimes continuing to exhibit the character of a full
hybrid.

In general, the success attending the production and perpetuity of
hybrids among plants depends, as in the animal kingdom, on the degree of
proximity between the species intermarried. If their organization be
very remote, impregnation never takes place; if somewhat less distant,
seeds are formed, but always imperfect and sterile. The next degree of
relationship yields hybrid seedlings, but these are barren; and it is
only when the parent species are very nearly allied that the hybrid race
may be perpetuated for several generations. Even in this case the best
authenticated examples seem confined to the crossing of hybrids with
individuals of pure breed. In none of the experiments most accurately
detailed does it appear that both the parents were mules.

Wiegmann diversified as much as possible his mode of bringing about
these irregular unions among plants. He often sowed parallel rows, near
to each other, of the species from which he desired to breed; and,
instead of mutilating, after Kolreuter's fashion, the plants of one of
the parent stocks, he merely washed the pollen off their anthers. The
branches of the plants in each row were then gently bent towards each
other and intertwined; so that the wind, and numerous insects, as they
passed from the flowers of one to those of the other species, carried
the pollen and produced fecundation.

_Vegetable hybrids why rare in a wild slate._--The same observer saw a
good exemplification of the manner in which hybrids may be formed in a
state of nature. Some wallflowers and pinks had been growing in a
garden, in a dry sunny situation, and their stigmas had been ripened so
as to be moist, and to absorb pollen with avidity, although their
anthers were not yet developed. These stigmas became impregnated by
pollen blown from some other adjacent plants of the same species; but
had they been of different species, and not too remote in their
organization, mule races must have resulted.

When, indeed, we consider how