Chap. XX. UNCONSCIOUS SELECTION. 201 



fruit, and vegetables which were then cultivated with some 

 excellent drawings made a hundred and fifty years previously, 

 was struck with surprise at the great improvement which had 

 been effected ; and remarks that these ancient flowers and 

 vegetables would now be rejected, not only by a florist but by 

 a village gardener. Since the time of Buffon the work of 

 improvement has steadil}^ and rapidly gone on. Every florist 

 who compares our present flowers with those figured in books 

 published not long since, is astonished at the change. A well- 

 known amateur,^^ in speaking of the varieties of Pelargonium 

 raised by Mr. Garth only twenty-two years before, remarks, 

 " What a rage they excited : surely we had attained perfection, 

 *' it was said; and now not one of the flowers of those days 

 " will be looked at. But none the less is the debt of gratitude 

 *' which we owe to those who saw what was to be done, and 

 *' did it." Mr. Paul, the well-known horticulturist, in writing 

 of the same flower,^* says he remembers when young being 

 delighted with the portraits in Sweet's work ; " but what are 

 '* they in point of beauty compared with the Pelargoniums of 

 " this day ? Here again nature did not advance by leaps ; 

 " the improvement was gradual, and if we had neglected 

 " those very gradual advances, we must have foregone the 

 " present grand results." How well this practical horti- 

 culturist appreciates and illustrates the gradual and accumu- 

 lative force of selection ! The Dahlia has advanced in beauty 

 in a like manner ; the line of improvement being guided by 

 fashion, and by the sucessive modifications which the flower 

 slowly underwent.**^ A steady and gradual change has been 

 noticed in many other flowers : thus an old florist,^^ after 

 describing the leading varieties of the Pink which were 

 grown in 1813, adds, '* the pinks of those days would now be 

 " scarcely grown as border-flowers." The improvement of 

 so many flowers and the number of the varieties which have 

 been raised is all the more striking when we hear that the 



"^ * Journal of Horticulture,' 1862, Floricult. See, in * Gardener's Chro- 



p. 394. nicle,' 18+3, p. 86. 



** 'Gardener's Chronicle,' 1857, *« ' Journal of Horticulture,* Oct. 



p. 85. 24th, 18G5, p. 239. 



*^ See Mr. Wildman's address to the 



