Bailey.] ^^^ [Mayl, 



What, now, becomes of this enormous surplus of seeds ? Let us take a 

 rough survey of the entire seed crop of any year. In the first place, a 

 certain percentage of the seeds is laid aside by the seedsman as a surety 

 against failure in the year to come. Much of this old stock never finds its 

 vray into the market and is finally discarded. We will estimate this ele- 

 ment of waste as twenty per cent. Of the eighty per cent, which is 

 actually sold, perhaps another ten per cent, is never planted, leaving 

 about seventy per cent, which finds its way into the ground. These two 

 items of loss are pure waste and have no effect upon the resulting crop. 

 Now, of the seeds which are planted, not more than seventy -five per cent, 

 can be expected to germinate. That is, there is certainly an average loss of 

 twenty-five per cent, in nearly all seeds — and much more in some — due to 

 inherent weakness, and seventy-five per cent, represents the survival in a 

 conflict of strength. We have now accounted for about half of the total 

 seed product of any year. The remaining half produces plants ; but here 

 the most important part of the conflict begins. In the crops mentioned 

 above, mucli less than half of the seeds which are grown ever appear in 

 the form of a crop. We must remember, moreover, that in making the 

 estimate of the number of acres which these seeds would plant, I have 

 used the customary estimates of the quantity of seeds required to plant an 

 acre. Now, these estimates of seedsmen and planters are always very 

 liberal. Every farmer sows from five to twenty times more seeds than he 

 needs. Some years ago, I sowed seeds according to the recommendation 

 of one of our best seedsmen, and I found that peas would be obliged to 

 stand four-fifths of an inch apart, beets about twenty to the foot, and other 

 vegetables in like confusion. I suppose that of all the seeds which 

 actually come up, not more than one in ten or a dozen, in garden vege- 

 tables, ever give mature plants. What becomes of the remainder? They 

 are thinned out for the good of those which are left. 



This simple process of thinning out vegetables has had a most powerful 

 eff"ect upon the evolution of our domestic flora. It is a process of unde- 

 signed selection. This selection proceeds upon the difl"erences in the 

 seedlings. The weak individuals are disposed of, and those which are 

 strongest and most vinlike the general run are preserved. It is a clear 

 case of the survival of the unlike. The laborer who weeds and thins 

 your lettuce bed unconsciously blocks out his ideas in the plants which 

 he leaves. But all this is a struggle of Jew against Jew, not of Jew 

 against Philistine. It is a conflict within the species, not of species 

 against species. It therefore tends to destroy the solidarity of the specific 

 type, and helps to introduce much of that promiscuous uulikeness which 

 is the distinguishing characteristic of domestic plants. 



Let us now transfer this emphatic example to wild nature. There we 

 shall find the same prodigal production of seeds. In the place of the 

 gardener undesignedly moulding the lines of divergence, we find the 

 inexorable i)hysical circumstances into which the plastic organisms must 

 grow, if they grow at all. These circumstances are very often the direct 



