Darwiniana : essays / by Thomas H. Huxley.

  • Huxley, Thomas Henry, 1825-1895.
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Darwiniana : essays / by Thomas H. Huxley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    62/496 (page 48)
    II between the same two species. It is not always equal in degree in a first cross, and in the hybrid produced from this cross. In the same manner as in grafting trees, the capacity of one species or variety to take on another is incidental on generally unknown differences in their vegetative systems ; so in crossing, the greater or less facility of one species to unite with another is incidental on unknown differences in their reproductive systems. There is no more reason to think that species have been specially endowed with various degrees of sterility to prevent them crossing and breeding in Nature, than to think that trees have been specially endowed with various and somewhat analogous degrees of difficulty in being grafted together, in order to prevent them becoming inarched in our forests. The sterility of first crosses between pure species, which have their reproductive systems perfect, seems to depend on several circumstances ; in some cases largely on the early death of the embryo. The sterility of hybrids which have their repro- ductive systems imperfect, and which have had this system and their whole organisation disturbed by being compounded of two distinct species, seems closely allied to that sterility which so frequently affects pure species when their natural con- ditions of life have been disturbed. This view is supported by a parallelism of another kind : namely, that the crossing of forms, only slightly different, is favourable to the vigour and fertility of the offspring ; and that slight changes in the con- ditions of life are apparently favourable to the vigour and fertility of all organic beings. It is not surprising that the degree of difficulty in uniting two species, and the degree of sterility of their hybrid offspring, should generally correspond, though due to distinct causes ; for both depend on the amount of difference of some kind between the species which are crossed. Nor is it surprising that the facility of effecting a first cross, the fertility of hybrids produced from it, and the capacity of being grafted together—though this latter capacity evidently depends on widely different circumstances—should all run to a certain extent parallel with the systematic affinity of the forms which are subjected to experiment: for systematic affinity