'JfHE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



285 



la a variety brought to au excess of fariua, old age or degene- 

 racy is impossible to be warded off. The finest are not only 

 most subject to blight, but to curl and other diseases, and in 

 moat varieties the vital stamina can only be maintained for a 

 few years by change of place almost every season, and careful 

 attention to choose seed for a low dry and warm situation, 

 from a rather co;l situation of considerable altitude, and which 

 has been much under pasture. May I add that greening the 

 seed tubers would also be advantageous. 



I am anxious that we farmers keep in advance in natural 

 science, to which our position, the comparatively quiet leisure, 

 solitary walking, opportunity for and customary practice of 

 careful observation in the fields of nature, and daily experie.nce, 

 lead us. A kndwledge of the laws which guide the varia- 

 bility of organic life is a most interesting and important 

 branch of science. By acting upon these laws man becomes 

 not only an improver, but so far a creator— able to render 

 existing forms more perfect or more useful, and to produce even 

 new forms of being without end. In my discovery of the 

 fixity of species by natural competitive selection, I have over- 

 turned the only argument worth overturning brought forward 

 by ancient superstition against the law of development. I have 

 shown that wo can go ahead of college-bred, closet-taught 

 naturalists, and leave them to follow in our wake at the dis- 

 tance of thirty years. This is nothing remarkable, as most of 

 them are mere bundles of old-world prejudices. May I there- 

 fore hope for assistance from my brother-farmers, that we may 

 keep ahead ? 



Let me not be misunderstood here. There are two modes 

 of change in nature— by variation under competitive selection, 

 and by commixture of species nearly allied in the chain of 

 life. In the attainment of new kinds of being, it is 

 chiefly to the latter that we must have recourse, as the 

 former is slow in progress — at least as has hitherto been 

 carried out. There has been much misunderstanding 

 regarding this power of commixture. Every nurseryman of 

 note knows that if the commixing plants be not too wide in the 

 chain of life, the mule, as it is termed, is reproductive and 

 healthy. In wild animals too the same fact has been proven 

 in many cases by the keepers of menageries. It is only when 

 the commixing organisms are too wide in character and for- 

 mation that the progeny is non-productive. There may be, 

 or once there may have been, nearer links in the chain of life. 

 Species and even genera are, noio and then, disappearing front 

 the earth in the tcilds of nature. Some equivalent new ones 

 must be arising. This is the whole affair. Only, in the great 

 geological changes to which the planet has been subject, great 

 loss of life must have occurred, and opened up new fields of 

 extension, placing organisms under new circumstances, and 

 affording more chance of commixture and change. 



In the case of vegetable commixture this field of science is 

 not considered improper ; nor even is it so in birds, though in 

 quadrupeds it has to some extent been so, in the latter per- 

 haps rightly, as it has embraced those too widely apart. It 

 is only the creature that lives with a false life that is unfruit- 

 ful, and soon disappears. 



The members of locomotion in the higher vertebrates are 

 strikingly similar. Under the law of competitive selection, 

 fins can change to feet, feet to arms, and aims to wings, and 

 vice vers'i, but not this without a pre-ordained capacity. This 

 law guides the organs to improvement, and alters them in 

 accommodation to circumstances should circumstances change, 

 but canuot originate new organs. No modification of this law 

 could originate the hollow fang of the serpent, so formed as in 

 the forcible iusertion to press upon the venom-bag at its root, 

 and 80 sijuirt the poison into the bottom of the wound ; nor 



could it plant the rattle of warning on the tail of the mo^t 

 dangerous suake. 



Of the arcana of nature, and knowledge of the laws and in- 

 fluences that regulate the chain of life, we are as yet only en- 

 tered upou the threshold.* Competitive selection embraces 

 the line of utility, not of beauty. This law cannot accouut for 

 the beauty of nature, es{)ecially for flowery vegetable naturet 

 (it would seem only begun to be flowery when man, the only 

 organism that we know of, having an extended sense of the 

 beautiful, came to exist). Nor does it account for the highly 

 ornamental decoration of birds by feather-clothing, arranged 

 to produce united a regular j^icturesque eS'ect; iu both of 

 which— the flowers and birds — the organism itself (the pea- 

 cock and a few others excepted) seem to have little or no 

 sense of the beautiful ; at least no feeling of prefereiice, 

 so as to exert a selecting power, gradually to produce that 

 beauty, as might take place in the case of man. Look at the 

 most ingenious and beautiful construction of feathers, so light, 

 so strong in united effect, so graceful, coloured like the 

 tinged clouds, crimsou and gold, of morn and even — both 

 formed of crude matters — both with powers of aerial flight. 

 The law of competitive selection never cultivated this beauty. 

 There are many other pheuomeua not yet accounted for by 

 general law, in some of which design and balancings seem to 

 appear, and which, remaining in darkness, is a disgrace to the 

 present age. The k:;own effect of sunligbt on development, 

 as well uterine as extra-uterine ;.t the power of mind or the 

 will over vital development ; the aberrations from the general 

 law of like producing like ; the electro-magnetic chsracter of 

 life ; the mental or living principle of one organism mixing 

 with and paraljzing and controlling another ; — here is work 

 wants doing. Patrick Matthew. 



Gourdie Hill, Errol, Carse ofGowrie, Feb. 26th, 1861. 



THE OVER-FEEDING UUESTION AND THE 

 HEREFORDS.— Mr. Williams' "Sir Colin," the first prize 

 Hereford bull at the Dorchester Show of the Bath and West 

 of England Society, and the second at Canterbury, has been 

 slaughtered. The reason will be gathered from what we said 

 of him at^Dorchester : — '' Sir Colin is a magnificent specimen 

 of his kind, but now, as it would seem, utterly ruined by over- 

 feeding." The judge?, indeed, only awarded the premiums to 

 him " conditionally " on his proving of any further use, and it 

 would be important to ascertain if he ever again qualified. 

 Mr. Edwards' "Leominster," a first prize Hereford at many 

 meetings of the Royal and other Societies, and the best bull 

 of his breed at Canterbury, is also dead ; but the reason 

 assigned here is from his having sprung a sinew in the hind 

 leg. It was further report ;d that Mr. Rea's " Sir Benjamin " 

 had been seen in Smithfield, but this we are assured is incor- 

 rect, and that he is still in strong work. 



* Threshold — the threshing-floor, where the operation of 

 threshing is holden ; the house-barn or hall of entry to the 

 German farmer's house, allotted to the useful. 



t The star and branchy forms made of congealed water upon 

 our windows, by the general law of crystallization, are very 

 similar ; the stars to many of our flowers ; and the branchy 

 forms to the leaves of plants. This points so far at general 

 law reaching to beauty. The beautiful prismatic order, or 

 rather disorder, of the eun's rays in the rainbow leads in the 

 same direction. We see this also iu the peacock's tail. 



+ Sunposing this orb to have gradually cooled, a dense cloud 

 of aqueous and other vapour must have existed after life had 

 come to exist, the gradual clearing away of which by con- 

 densation and increase of light may account for the pro- 

 gression of being: I have often wished I had opportunity tQ 

 follov? out this by experiment. 



