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By L. H. Bailey. 



DE VARIGNY has written a most suggestive book upon 

 Experimental Evolution, in which he contends for the 

 establishment of an institution where experiments can be 

 definitely undertaken for the purpose of transforming a species 

 into a new species. " In experimental Iransformism," he writes, 

 " lies the only test which we can apply to the evolutionary theory. 

 We must use all the methods we are acquainted with, and also 

 those, yet unknown, which cannot fail to disclose themselves 

 when we begin a thorough investigation of the matter, and do our 

 utmost to bring about the transmutation of any species. We do 

 not specially desire to transform any one species into another known 

 at present ; we wish to transform it into a new species. . 

 Experimental transformism is what we need now, and therein lies 

 the only method we can use." 



This is a most commendable object, and I hope that the 

 attempt will be made to create a new species before our very eyes. 

 This is what most people demand as a proof of evolution, and 

 they are sometimes impatient that it has not been done ; and it 

 would seem, upon the face of it, that nothing more could be 

 desired. When I reflect, however, upon the fact that this very 

 thing has occurred time and again with the horticulturist, and 

 consider that botanists and philosophers persist in refusing to see 

 it, I am constrained to offer some suggestions upon De Varigny's 

 excellent ambition. If I show a botanist a horticultural type of 

 recent or even contemporaneous origin, which I consider to be 

 specifically distinct from its ancestors, he at once exclaims that it 

 is not a species, but a horticultural variety. If I ask him why, he 

 replies, " Because it is an artificial production ! " If I show him 

 that the type is just as distinct from the species from which it 

 sprung as that species is from its related species, and that it repro- 

 duces its kind with just as much certainty, he still replies that, 

 because it is a horticultural production, it cannot be a species, 



* Abstract of an Address before the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, 

 Boston, Feb. 23, 1895, in The American Naturalist. 



