Page:History of botany (Sachs; Garnsey).djvu/450

430 respecting the conditions under which the production of hybrids is possible, the results of crossing, and the causes of failure. A special interest attaches to his mixed and compound hybrids, to his experiments on the various degrees of influence which foreign pollen exercises on the behaviour of the female organ, and the connection of this point with the formation of varieties. It is impossible to give a more distinct account of Gärtner's results without entering into discussions which would exceed the limits of a historical survey. It is the less necessary to do so, since Nägeli undertook in 1865 to give a summary view of all the important results to be found in the wealth of material supplied by Koelreuter, Herbert and Gärtner. Gärtner's experiments in hybridisation were conducted at Calw in Wiirtemberg, the place where Koelreuter had made his in 1762 and 1763. And thus it was in two small cities of Wiirtemberg that the foundations of the sexual theory were laid and the theory itself perfected, as far as it could be by experiment only, by three of the most eminent among observers. Camerarius in Tubingen, Koelreuter and K. F. Gärtner in Calw contributed so largely to the empirical establishment of the theory, that all that was done by others would seem of small importance, if artificial pollination only were in question. But Koelreuter was imperfectly acquainted with the methods by which pollination is usually effected in nature; Sprengel was the first who saw into all their more important relations, and the fact must not be concealed, that Gärtner in regarding Konrad Sprengel's observations as unworthy of serious consideration, neglected the most fruitful source of new and magnificent results. His careful study of the secreting of nectar and of the sensitiveness of the organs of fertilisation, and his many observations on other biological relations in flowers, would have found their natural termination, if he had connected them at all points with Sprengel's general