ON V.VraETIKS, RACES, SUB-SPECIES, AND SPECIES. 89 



In Chili, European vegetables attain a considerable size ; there 

 does not appear to have been any tendency in the plants to 

 return to their wild state. 



In St. Domingo, on the contrary, cabbages and lettuces in- 

 stead of remaining short, turnips and carrots instead of enlarg- 

 ing, all run to seed with surprising qviickness : they lose their 

 eatable qualities acquired from European cultivation. 



In North America there are neither apple-trees, pear-trees, 

 nor peach-trees of the same sorts as our own that have not 

 been introduced there : the Europeans some 300 years ago took 

 over the seeds of these trees ; but so far from yielding v hat they 

 yield us, they produced, at least in Virginia, as a first generation, 

 trees with ivild a7id austere fruit, which was not eatable by those 

 accustomed to better things at honic. The second generation 

 sprung from the first American seeds was not so bad as the first ; 

 each generation was better than its predecessor, but their fruit is 

 still inferior to our own, and what is very curious, the best of 

 them differ from ours in taste and aroma. These facts, collected 

 by JNI. Poiteau in Virginia five and forty years ago, show what 

 modifications can be produced by a succession of generations in 

 plants derived from the same seed, and they at the same time 

 justify our definition of species ; and if it be objected that the 

 seeds of the fruit-trees originally sent to Virginia did not in this 

 country produce such good fruit as they do at present, still 

 the great fact remains, that the seeds, w hen sown in Virginia, 

 yielded something different from what they then yielded in Eu- 

 rope. 



We see then how the new conditions in which fruit trees were 

 placed in North America gave rise to two principal results: 1. 

 By depriving the fruit of the quality it had acquired by Euro- 

 pean cultivation ; 2. By making it undergo, in the course of 

 successive generations, modifications different from those of the 

 fruit cultivated by us. 



All that can be expected from modifications of a variety 

 already improved by a change of locality is shown by an ob- 

 servation of M. Sageret : the kernels of some Green- Gage 

 plums, cultivated in Paris, were sown in Auvergne : some excellent 

 fruit was obtained from them. The kernels of the latter being 

 sown in Paris gave a variety of the Green-Gage with a rose- 

 coloured and good tasting fruit. Taking into consideration the 

 fact that European fruit trees have already been peculiarly 

 modified in North America, might it not be possible, by recul- 

 tivating the North American varieties in Europe, to obtain new 

 varieties with new qualities, which might be propagated by 

 grafting, if not from seed ? 



VOL. VI, H 



