offspring from a cross, namely, to the characters proper to either pure
parent-form. As a general rule, crossed offspring in the first generation are
nearly intermediate between their parents, but the grandchildren and
succeeding generations continually revert, in a greater or lesser degree, to
one or both of their progenitors. Several authors have maintained that hybrids
and mongrels include all the characters of both parents, not fused together,
but merely mingled in different proportions in different parts of the body;
or, as Naudin (13/50. 'Nouvelles Archives du Museum' tome 1 page 151.) has
expressed it, a hybrid is a living mosaic-work, in which the eye cannot
distinguish the discordant elements, so completely are they intermingled. We
can hardly doubt that, in a certain sense, this is true, as when we behold in
a hybrid the elements of both species segregating themselves into segments in
the same flower or fruit, by a process of self-attraction or self-affinity;
this segregation taking place either by seminal or bud-propagation. Naudin
further believes that the segregation of the two specific elements or essences
is eminently liable to occur in the male and female reproductive matter; and
he thus explains the almost universal tendency to reversion in successive
hybrid generations. For this would be the natural result of the union of
pollen and ovules, in both of which the elements of the same species had been
segregated by self-affinity. If, on the other hand, pollen which included the
elements of one species happened to unite with ovules including the elements
of the other species, the intermediate or hybrid state would still be
retained, and there would be no reversion. But it would, as I suspect, be more
correct to say that the elements of both parent-species exist in every hybrid
in a double state, namely, blended together and completely separate. How this
is possible, and what the term specific essence or element may be supposed to
express, I shall attempt to show in the chapter on the hypothesis of
pangenesis.

But Naudin's view, as propounded by him, is not applicable to the reappearance