[On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin]@TWC D-Link book
On the Origin of Species

CHAPTER IX
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He then fertilised thirteen flowers of the one kind with pollen of the other; but only a single head produced any seed, and this one head produced only five grains.
Manipulation in this case could not have been injurious, as the plants have separated sexes.

No one, I believe, has suspected that these varieties of maize are distinct species; and it is important to notice that the hybrid plants thus raised were themselves PERFECTLY fertile; so that even Gartner did not venture to consider the two varieties as specifically distinct.
Girou de Buzareingues crossed three varieties of gourd, which like the maize has separated sexes, and he asserts that their mutual fertilisation is by so much the less easy as their differences are greater.

How far these experiments may be trusted, I know not; but the forms experimented on are ranked by Sagaret, who mainly founds his classification by the test of infertility, as varieties, and Naudin has come to the same conclusion.
The following case is far more remarkable, and seems at first incredible; but it is the result of an astonishing number of experiments made during many years on nine species of Verbascum, by so good an observer and so hostile a witness as Gartner: namely, that the yellow and white varieties when crossed produce less seed than the similarly coloured varieties of the same species.

Moreover, he asserts that, when yellow and white varieties of one species are crossed with yellow and white varieties of a DISTINCT species, more seed is produced by the crosses between the similarly coloured flowers, than between those which are differently coloured.

Mr.Scott also has experimented on the species and varieties of Verbascum; and although unable to confirm Gartner's results on the crossing of the distinct species, he finds that the dissimilarly coloured varieties of the same species yield fewer seeds, in the proportion of eighty-six to 100, than the similarly coloured varieties.


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