The sterility of species, or of their offspring, when crossed has, however, received more attention than the uniformity in character of the individuals composing the species. It is exceedingly natural that such sterility{243} should have been long thought the certain characteristic of species. For it is obvious that if the allied different forms which we meet with in the same country could cross together, instead of finding a number of distinct species, we should have a confused and blending series. The fact however of a perfect gradation in the degree of sterility between species, and the circumstance of some species most closely allied (for instance many species of crocus and European heaths) refusing to breed together, whereas other species, widely different, and even belonging to distinct genera, as the fowl and the peacock, pheasant and grouse{244}, Azalea and Rhododendron, Thuja and Juniperus, breeding together ought to have caused a doubt whether the sterility did not depend on other causes, distinct from a law, coincident with their creation. I may here remark that the fact whether one species will or will not breed with another is far less important than the sterility of the offspring when produced; for even some domestic races differ so greatly in size (as the great stag-greyhound and lap-dog, or cart-horse and Burmese ponies) that union is nearly impossible; and what is less generally known is, that in plants Koelreuter has shown by hundreds of experiments that the pollen of one species will fecundate the germen of another species, whereas the pollen of this latter will never act on the germen of the former; so that the simple fact of mutual impregnation certainly has no relation whatever to the distinctness in creation of the two forms. When two species are attempted to be crossed which are so distantly allied that offspring are never produced, it has been observed in some cases that the pollen commences its proper action by exserting its tube, and the germen commences swelling, though soon afterwards it decays. In the next stage in the series, hybrid offspring are produced though only rarely and few in number, and these are absolutely sterile: then we have hybrid offspring more numerous, and occasionally, though very rarely, breeding with either parent, as is the case with the common mule. Again, other hybrids, though infertile _inter se_, will breed _quite_ freely with either parent, or with a third species, and will yield offspring generally infertile, but sometimes fertile; and these latter again will breed with either parent, or with a third or fourth species: thus Koelreuter blended together many forms. Lastly it is now admitted by those botanists who have longest contended against the admission, that in certain families the hybrid offspring of many of the species are sometimes perfectly fertile in the first generation when bred together: indeed in some few cases Mr Herbert{245} found that the