These alone are the unimportant differences, which Gartner is able to
point out, between hybrid and mongrel plants. On the other hand, the
resemblance in mongrels and in hybrids to their respective parents,
more especially in hybrids produced from nearly related species,
follows according to Gartner the same laws. When two species are
crossed, one has sometimes a prepotent power of impressing its
likeness on the hybrid; and so I believe it to be with varieties of
plants. With animals one variety certainly often has this prepotent
power over another variety. Hybrid plants produced from a reciprocal
cross, generally resemble each other closely; and so it is with
mongrels from a reciprocal cross. Both hybrids and mongrels can be
reduced to either pure parent-form, by repeated crosses in successive
generations with either parent.
These several remarks are apparently applicable to animals; but the
subject is here excessively complicated, partly owing to the existence
of secondary sexual characters; but more especially owing to
prepotency in transmitting likeness running more strongly in one sex
than in the other, both when one species is crossed with another, and
when one variety is crossed with another variety. For instance, I
think those authors are right, who maintain that the ass has a
prepotent power over the horse, so that both the mule and the hinny
more resemble the ass than the horse; but that the prepotency runs
more strongly in the male-ass than in the female, so that the mule,
which is the offspring of the male-ass and mare, is more like an ass,
than is the hinny, which is the offspring of the female-ass and
stallion.
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