98 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



the effect of use or disuse or its parts, we are Lamarckians ; if we believe 

 that these forms are the result of natural selection, then we are Dar- 

 winians. 



Before I go further, I wish to say that all this doctrine of evolution has 

 no relation to religion. It does have a good deal of relation to what has 

 been called ''theology," but not to religion. We wonder how the world 

 has been created, and we are all anxious to know. You say, ''God made 

 it so." That does not satisfy me. I want to know why. If I believe in 

 the doctrine of evolution, it offers me an explanation of how God did 

 make the world, and it gives me an immensely grander explanation of the 

 creation than I ever could have had by believing in the doctrine of special 

 creation. Everything outside of one's self used to be incomprehensibh.^, 

 but now everything is created for the niche which it fills in the general 

 evolutionary progress of nature and the race. 



I wanted to say something tonight about the practical matters of evo- 

 lution as they touch the philosophy of the breeding of plants; but as my 

 time is rapidly going, I will not say more about the theories of evolution, 

 except to call to your minds the philosophy of Weissman. 



These differences which I have pointed out to you as existing every- 

 where arise through sexual union. Weissman has proposed the theory 

 that the only reason why sex ever came into the world at all is that the 

 offspring might be different from the parents; for, if you take a bud of a 

 chrysanthemum plant, you get the same variety; but, if you practice sex- 

 ual propngation, all the seedlings, or nearly all, which you get, will be 

 new varieties; and thereby we are introducing a greater variety into the 

 world than we had before. That is probably the only reason why sex 

 was developed. Weissman, starting on this foundation, has advanced a 

 curious philosophy. He supposes, in the first place, all the differences 

 arose from the amalgamation of sex; that the differences which arise 

 after the individuals are born are not perpetuated, but are lost with the 

 death of the individual. Darwin supposes that these differences in the 

 individual plants and animals may arise from sex, but that they arise 

 chiefly from the influences or conditions in which the plant grows. The 

 jilant may become smaller because it grew in a dry climate, or where 

 there was a shorter season. He supposes that these are some of the rea- 

 sons whv individual differences arise. Whilst Mr. Weissman knows that 

 these differences do occur because of the effects of the surroundings, he 

 thmks they are of little account, and that all the permanent progress of 

 the race has been made from the differences which arise from sexual 

 union. 



Now, before I take up for ten or fifteen minutes the subject of plant- 

 bT'eedincr, I want to bring to your minds the differences between animals 

 and plants. We say that animals can be bred with more or less definite- 

 ness. and we know that plants have not been bred with any srreat decree 

 of definiteness. We say, if it can be done in one. it can in the other, 

 Thnt does not follow. Let us see. You cut off a sheen's lee: and stick 

 it in the crround. and it does not make a shpen. The Baldwin annle tree 

 has a thousand flower buds, and pverv one of those has both sexfs. and we 

 cut off one limb of that Bnldwin and set if into nnother. and wo have 

 another tree. So that a plant is not nn individnnlitv. a personality, and 

 every one of these flowers is subjected to a different influence from every 



