I was at last led to make the experiments recorded in the present volume from the following circumstance.  For the sake of determining certain points with respect to inheritance, and without any thought of the effects of close interbreeding, I raised close together two large beds of self-fertilised and crossed seedlings from the same plant of Linaria vulgaris.  To my surprise, the crossed plants when fully grown were plainly taller and more vigorous than the self-fertilised ones.  Bees incessantly visit the flowers of this Linaria and carry pollen from one to the other; and if insects are excluded, the flowers produce extremely few seeds; so that the wild plants from which my seedlings were raised must have been intercrossed during all previous generations.  It seemed therefore quite incredible that the difference between the two beds of seedlings could have been due to a single act of self-fertilisation; and I attributed the result to the self-fertilised seeds not having been well ripened, improbable as it was that all should have been in this state, or to some other accidental and inexplicable cause.  During the next year, I raised for the same purpose as before two large beds close together of self-fertilised and crossed seedlings from the carnation, Dianthus caryophyllus.  This plant, like the Linaria, is almost sterile if insects are excluded; and we may draw the same inference as before, namely, that the parent-plants must have been intercrossed during every or almost every previous generation.  Nevertheless, the self-fertilised seedlings were plainly inferior in height and vigour to the crossed.

My attention was now thoroughly aroused, for I could hardly doubt that the difference between the two beds was due to the one set being the offspring of crossed, and the other of self-fertilised flowers.  Accordingly I selected almost by hazard two other plants, which happened to be in flower in the greenhouse, namely, Mimulus luteus and Ipomoea purpurea, both of which, unlike the Linaria and Dianthus, are highly self-fertile if insects are excluded.  Some flowers on a single plant of both species were fertilised with their own pollen, and others were crossed with pollen from a distinct individual; both plants being protected by a net from insects.  The crossed and self-fertilised seeds thus produced were sown on opposite sides of the same pots, and treated in all respects alike; and the plants when fully grown were measured and compared.  With both species, as in the cases of the Linaria and Dianthus, the crossed seedlings were conspicuously superior in height and in other ways to the self-fertilised.  I therefore determined to begin a long series of experiments with various plants, and these were continued for the following eleven years; and we shall see that in a large majority of cases the crossed beat the self-fertilised plants.  Several of the exceptional cases, moreover, in which the crossed plants were not victorious, can be explained.