AMONGST PLANTS. 11 



then we should say that a new species had been created under the 

 hand of man ; and this rule I wish now to apply to a very few 

 familiar plants. In doing so, I do not wish to be understood as 

 saying that I consider it advisable to describe these plants as 

 species under the existing methods of botanical description and 

 nomenclature, for, merely as a matter of convenience and perspi- 

 cuity, I do not ; but I wish to show that they really are, in every 

 essential character, just as much species as very many other 

 universally accepted species are. 



[The speaker then produced numerous instances of the evolu- 

 tion of forms of garden plants, in various genera, which are as 

 distinct from their parents, and from each other, as accepted 

 species of the same genus are; and these forms are as permanent, 

 when multiplied extensively through many years by means of the 

 seeds, as these wild species are. " Here we have absolutely new 

 and unique types, as De Varigny demands, and they are as distinct 

 from each other and from their parents, in accepted botanical 

 characters, as ' good species ' in the same genus are from each 

 other, and they perpetuate these characters as unequivocally as 

 those species do. Moreover, we know definitely what their origins 

 were, and they therefore answer all the purposes of experimental 

 evolution. 



" All this is but another illustration of how tenaciously botan- 

 ists still hold to the Linnaean idea of species, whilst they profess 

 the Darwinian idea."] 



I have now brought to your attention a few familiar plants for 

 the purpose of showing that what are, to all intents and purposes, 

 good species have originated in recent years ; and that, whilst 

 Botanists demand that the origination of species within historic 

 times shall constitute the only indisputable proof of organic evo- 

 lution, they nevertheless refuse to accept as species those forms 

 which have thus originated, and which answer every demand of 

 their definitions and practice. The proofs of the evolution of 

 species, drawn from the accepted practice of the best botanists 

 themselves, could be indefinitely extended. We need only recall 

 the botanical confusion in which most cultivated plants now lie, to 

 find abundant proof of the evolution of hundreds of types so 

 distinct that the best botanists have considered them to be species; 



