D^r Sir,

I return my best thanks to you for your obliging present of your very interesting journal this moment received. I was employed part of yesterday reading another copy of it with great pleasure. The present moment is always the best & I will give the best answer I can to your queries. The first question I should answer by adding to the words “2 hybrid Hippeastra” the following words of “any cross or crosses however complicated”. I am pretty sure that I mentioned in my letter to you that I was about to institute an experiment to try if the mule pollen from another plant could beat in the same manner the natural pollen on a wild bulb; & the startling fact has followed that it did so. I took a bulb fresh from the Organ Mountains in Brazil¹ of a new species allied to H. Aulicum or variety thereof which produced 2 twoflowered scapes the one having a few days precedence of the other. I impregnated the two fl^rs. of the 1^st. scape with its own pollen & one flower of the second; & having removed the anthers I touched the 4^th. flower with the pollen of a triple cross raised by pollen of the many flowered-smooth Brazilian H pulverulentum from a cross between H. vittatum & Reginæ which are bearded. At first the three germens impregnated with the natural dust began to swell for seed & the 4^th. was stationary. After a few days the 4^th began to swell & from that moment the other three stopped short. The progress of the 4^th. was then rapid & in a few more days the 3 first died away & a vigorous capsule was produced by the cross bred pollen. My attempts to cross the crocuses continue to fail. There is great difficulty in extracting the anthers of Croci & English heaths before the pollen is shed, the petals being so involved in the bud that they cannot be easily opened, and if the corolla is prematurely damaged the chance of seed is diminished by the injury.

I do not by any means think it impossible for insects to fecundate those flowers by pollen from other individuals, but I think there must be flowers which are always impregnated by their own males. Flowers of Œnothera can scarcely expand from the bud without impregnating the stigmas, but certainly a moth might light of the stigma at the very moment after expansion & bring pollen from the next flower. I stated in my treatise² that a course of experiments was wanting to ascertain how soon after contact with the pollen, the ovary was fertilized & closed against all further influence, & till that is ascertained I do not see how the question can be answered positively; & probably the speed of the impregnation varies in different genera.

The objection to your theory w^h. occurs to me is this. In some genera the facility of breeding crosses is great; in Hippeastrum there seems even a decided preference for foreign pollen: but if the fecundation by another individual was essential, the cases of wild cross-bred plants would be frequent instead of being rare.

We have so little experience concerning the successive generations of crossbred plants, & they are rarely produced in situations where “impregnation from other quarters may not be suspected” that I cannot answer your last question. I do not believe any general law can be laid down. I suspect a greater disposition to revert to the male than the female: but it is a strange fact, that there seem to be plants of which the first or equal cross is fertile, but the next cross of $\frac{3}{4}$ & $\frac{1}{4}$ sterile, but that fact requires further investigation. I hope to publish in the spring or sooner a supplement to my Amaryllidaceæ³ with some further remarks on crossbred plants, but my knowledge is very defective as to much of the mystery.

I may add to my answer to the first question, that the pollen of another individual seedling of the same cross has not the same effect, as the pollen of another individual of a different species or different cross. I am speaking of the genus Hippeastrum only.

I remain D^r Sir | Yrs faithfully | W Herbert 16 Chester St

Wednesd^y.