ON VARIETIES, RACES, SUB-SPECIES, AND SPECIES. 61 



VII. — General Remarks on the Variations of the Individuals 

 which form the Groups called, in Natural History, Varieties^ 

 Races, Sub-species, and Species. By M. Clievreul, of the 

 Academy of Sciences of Paris.* 



(Translated from the French.) 



PART I. 



§ I. INTRODUCTION. 



The details into which we have entered, in speaking of the Am- 

 pelography, are sufficient to make our readers acquaintefl with 

 the manner in which Count Odart has treated his subject, and we 

 may therefore now proceed to discuss the question of the ilege- 

 neration of cultivated plants, as we proposed, without the danger 

 of being reproached for having given our own ideas instead of 

 confining ourselves to the statement of the doctrines contained in 

 the work submitted to us for examination. Indeed we shall not 

 cease to treat of Ampelography in examining tliis question in a 

 general point of view ; for Count Odart, in giving the former the 

 whole of his attention, has perfectly appreciated the importance 

 of the latter, and in adopting what seems to us the better opinion, 

 has relied upon observations made with sound judgment, and 

 which are consequently capable of throwing light on the general 

 discussion of a subject to which they belong as particular facts. 



Count Odart uses the word species in the sense usually attached 

 to it in common parlance and garden language, that is, to denote 

 groups of living bodies, called by naturalists races, or simply 

 varieties. Although, perhaps, there may not be much inconve- 

 nience in employing the word species, instead of sub-species, 

 race, variety, to mark the different individual modifications of 

 the vine, apple, &c., which are reproduced or multiplied, with 

 their characters more or less well preserved, as the Muscat, Chas- 

 selas, Calville, Eeinette, &c. ; and where the question of the 

 degeneration of living bodies is confined to that of cultivated 

 plants, there is very gi-eat inconvenience in so doing when the 

 question is examined from its most general point of view, and 

 from which it is our intention to view it. For this reason we 

 shall, in this part of our memoir, endeavour to define, exactly, 

 the words species, sub-species, race, and variety, paying attention 

 to the actually known facts on which the principle of mutation 

 of species can be admitted or rejected. We shall then, in 

 another Part, return and discuss the particular question of the 



* These remarks, made by M. Chevreul in a Eeport to the Royal and 

 Central Society of Agriculture, on the Ampelography of Count Odart, will, 

 we expect, be found interesting to all botanists wlio regard variations in 

 vegetable forms from a high and general point of view. 



