12 The Significance of Horticultural Varieties. 
English breeder, WILLIAM PAUL, says : l 'He who is 
seeking to improve any class of plants, should watch 
narrowly and seize with alacrity any deviation from the 
fixed character However unpromising in appearance 
at the outset, he knows not what issues may lie concealed 
in a variation." SALTER also said that the greatest diffi- 
culty lies in finding a small initial deviation ; but when this 
has once been found all the rest lies within our power, 
however small the variation may be. And DARWIN, who 
cites this, 2 always emphasized its great importance when- 
ever he had occasion to refer to it. 
In other words, which we have already often quoted : 
The main condition necessary to produce a novelty is to 
be in possession of its first step. 
And yet as is well known the attempt is not by any 
means always successful. Sometimes the variation dis- 
appears without leaving a trace behind ; in which case of 
course all further efforts to deal with it are in vain. 
Unfixable deviations of this kind are, according to 
my experience, the occasional manifestation of latent 
characters. What the breeder wants to find are those 
cases in which the chance anomaly has already become 
a heritable although hidden race. If this has happened 
the anomaly will, in the first place, easily manifest itself, 
if the conditions of life are not quite unfavorable and in 
the second can rapidly be developed to the level of a good 
horticultural variety. 
So far as the available data enable -us to judge, breed- 
ing experiments of this kind always follow the same 
course. Hosts of examples can be found. Extensive 
1 Contributions to Horticultural Literature, 1892. Nature, Vol. 46, 
P- 583- 
2 Variations of Animals and Plants, II, p. 249. See also Part I, 
p. 267 et seq. 
