1880.1 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



I 



157 



known Darwinism. We have read the work 

 carefully through, but have been unable to find 

 what Mr. Cook found; and we are rather in- 

 clined to believe it is Mr. Cook that is silently 

 finding that he never had any thing serious to 

 fight, than that Dr. Gray has abandoned the 

 contest. 



In the first place it must be remembered that 

 Mr. Darwin has never ventured to propose any 

 theory of life. He finds life in the world in 

 various forms, and he finds these forms pos- 

 sess an innate tendency to vary. He conceives 

 this tendency to be influenced by good to the 

 individual, and therefore that the variations will 

 be likely to follow those conditions most favor- 

 able to individual development. !N^ow,the great 

 question is, how do those assemblages of indi- 

 viduals which we know as species originate ? 

 There are groups of plants comprising individu- 

 als, so nearly like each other, that even a child 

 would say they were " all of one sort, only a 

 little different." The botanist groups these 

 together. As soon as he finds some not quite 

 like the others in essential particulars he stops. 

 Sometimes he finds scores of these close resem- 

 blances, — sometimes only a few, — but there is 

 generally a line where he feels he may stop. 

 He calls them species. There is nothing cer- 

 tain or definite about the dividing lines. At 

 one time he finds the species grouped together 

 go on in regular order, as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 

 10, 11, 12. At other times there are breaks in 

 the apparent close connection, as 1,2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 

 10, 12. What is more natural than to suppose 

 that close relationships were once the rule, 

 and that the regularity has been broken up by 

 unfavorable circumstances? In looking into 

 nature, Mr. Darwin found that this is actually 

 the case. There is a continual struggle for life, 

 and only those most fit to contend with the cir- 

 cumstances survive. It is only the diversity 

 that makes what man calls species. It is this 

 dropping out of an occasional connecting link 

 that makes the diversity, — in other words, that 

 makes species, — and to show how this dropping 

 out occurs under a continual innate power of 

 varying, is the theory of Mr. Darwin, under the 

 name of " natural selection." Some objection 

 has been made to the theory that natural selec- 

 tion might vary, but not create form ; but this ob- 

 jection could not come from a morphologist who 

 has not yet been able to go to the bottom of 

 form. New forms in the individual plants are 

 known to grow out others. The seed vessel 



grew out of leaves. It can be no worse in any 

 law bearing on the origin of species. 



Once in a while, as new facts appear, investi- 

 gators like Gray, Darwin, and others, will natu- 

 rally make suggestions, or advance hypothe- 

 ses which may not accord with their own 

 generalizations. To use a common, but not 

 very elegant phrase, they for the moment " slop 

 over." We believe this has often been the 

 case in the discussion of incidental matters 

 which the undoubted truths of Darwinism have 

 led the world to examine. The writer of this 

 has now and then found himself in antagonism 

 to other students of nature in these side issues. 

 But it will not be fair on this account to say of 

 such issues that they evidence an abandonment 

 of Darwinism, and we are quite sure no one 

 who reads this little book without prejudice will 

 believe that Dr. Gray is one bit less a Darwin- 

 ian than he ever was. 



Forty Years of Pear Growing; tell- 

 ing HOW TO AVOID THE BlIGHT AND INSURE 



Good Crops, by Wm. Parry. — We have read 

 this pamphlet by Mr. Parry with a great deal of 

 interest, but we must confess that the question 

 how to avoid the blight, (fire blight) is not an- 

 swered satisfactorily to our mind. Mr. Parry's 

 answer is to plant the Sand Pear and its hybrids. 

 They will not blight it is said. How do we 

 know they will not? The only answer is that 

 Mr. Kieffer has had the tree a great number of 

 years on his grounds, and it was never blighted. 

 But Mr. Kieffer has others of the common kinds 

 of Pears, and they have never blighted. Indeed 

 the old-fashioned kinds of Pear rarely blight in 

 the north of Philadelphia. 



Mr. Parry's essay reads as if there were no 

 hope for the Pear, that it must go, and these 

 new Chinese hybrids all that is left to replace 

 them. But it is a fact that in many districts 

 the fire blight has never been known, — while 

 others that have been badly infected are now 

 wholly free. We know of one orchard that fif- 

 teen years ago came near being totally des- 

 troyed ; but the affected branches were cut away, 

 new ones sprouted out, the orchard has never 

 had a sign of it since, and there are Pears by 

 the wagon load. Much as we value the new hy- 

 brids, we can by no means go the length of pro- 

 nouncing them blight proof, — or of believing 

 that the old class of Pears are in the slightest 

 danger of being exterminated. 



Sheldon's Dairy Farming, Part 8, Cassel 

 Petter & Galpin, New York. This part is 



