94 ON VARIETIES, EACES, SUB-SPECIES, AND SPECIES. 



duals proceeding from a type to be found in nature, and the 

 stability of which is so great, that he is inclined to give it the 

 name of a sub-species. He declares that he has fovuid on the 

 hills in the Ardennes all the possible forms of apples and pears 

 cultivated in Belgium. He says that the pips of these wild trees, 

 sown where the trees yielding them naturally grow, yield nothing 

 but individuals identical with the types found in nature. To 

 modify the plants proceeding from these types, ive must, he says, 

 soio their seeds in countries to which they are not indigenous, 

 and tohere the circumstances are not the same as in their native 

 land. The seeds should be sown generation after generation, 

 and by the second sowing the variation or organic disposition 

 for change will be established, and that so strongly, that accord- 

 ing to M. Van Mons, it can undergo no further alteration : a 

 few successive sowings suffice to give the desired result, which 

 is to be finally completed in the country to which the type is in- 

 digenous. But the modifications which seeds belonging to the 

 beurre sub-species or type undergo will only give varieties of 

 heurre, as tlie seeds belonging to the sub-species or type ban 

 Chretien will only yield varieties of bon chretien. 



It is not necessary for our present purpose to inquire wliether 

 the respective types of Belgian fruit-trees are or are not to 

 be found wild in the Ardennes ; we need not consider that as an 

 error which may be but a particular case ; but we ought to make 

 a few remarks on the })roposition, that as a principle, all culti- 

 vated varieties which possess sufficient fixity to constitute a race, 

 as above defined, spring from types, having the degree of fixity 

 attributed by us to sub-species, and which are found between 

 the cultivated varieties and the species themselves from which 

 the types ai'e derived. We do not grant this to be true, simply 

 because in a great number of cases there are evidently no such 

 intermediate types existing between the cultivated races and the 

 individual types of the species; we shall content ourselves with 

 citing the case of the carrot ; there is nothing intermediate be- 

 tween the wild type of the sjJccies and the races artificially ob- 

 tained. 



We have two other remarks to make on what we think is too 

 positively stated by Van Mons. 



First Remark. — Although we are perfectly ready to admit the 

 great influence that causes acting in diff"erent places have in the 

 modification of plants, we cannot agree witli M. Van Mons 

 when he says that a plant can only be modified when in a different 

 place from that to which it is indigenous, since we have seen — 1. 

 the influence of the organisation peculiar to each seed, and which 

 can be itself modified by the particular circumstances, natural 

 or artificial, in which the seed bearer may be placed (§ III. 



