412 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



gives rise to uo new features, but only mingles, and, if continued, 

 blends, the characters of sorts before separate ; and that a hybrid 

 origin was entii-ely out of the question in species which had no con- 

 geners, or none in the country to which they were indigenous ; yet that 

 such species diverged into varieties as readily as any other. As to the 

 general denial, 1. that there is any such thing as natural selection, 

 and 2. that there is any variation in species for natural selection to 

 act upon, he could not yet conceive how such denial was to be sup- 

 ported ; but to answer its purpose it would have to be carried to the 

 length of denying that the individuals of a species ever have anything 

 which they did not inherit ; — slight variations, accumulated by inher- 

 itance, being just what the theory in question made use of, — taking 

 little or no account of more salient and abrupt variations, though in- 

 stances of the latter kind could certainly be adduced. 



2. In opposition to the view that such variations as cultivation or 

 domestication so copiously affords are of no account in the discussion, 

 and have no counterpart in nature. Professor Gray maintained, that the 

 varieties of cultivation afforded direct evidence of the essential varia- 

 bility of species ; that no domesticated plant had refused to vary ; that 

 those of recent introduction, such as Californian annuals, mostly began 

 to sport very promptly, sometimes even in the first or second genera- 

 tion ; man having done nothing more than to sow the seed here instead 

 of in California, perhaps in no better soil. Here the variations were 

 as natural as those of the wild plant in its native soil. Man produces 

 no organic variation, but merely directs a power which he did not 

 originate, and by selection and close breeding preserves the incipient 

 variety which else would probably be lost, and gives it a choice oppor- 

 tunity to vary more. Consider, he remarked, how small the chance of 

 the survival of any variety when originated in its native habitat, sur- 

 rounded by its fellows, — when not one seed out of a hundred or a 

 thousand ever comes to germinate, and not a moiety of these ever suc- 

 ceed in becoming a plant, — and when, of those that do grow up and 

 blossom, the danger is imminent that the flowers may be fertilized by 

 the pollen of some of its abundant neighbors of the unvaried type, — 

 and it will be easy to understand why plants vary so promptly in our 

 gardens, mostly raised from a small quantity of seeds to begin with, prob- 

 ably all from the same stock, where they are almost sure to self-fertilize 

 in the first generation, — where every desirable variation is watched for, 



