LINNJEUS AS AN EVOLUTIONIST 23 



But there was a difficulty here with these two members of the genus 

 Beta, the simple and unvarying wild kind, and the extremely variable 

 one of cultivation. The cultivated plant was hardy, often ran wild, 

 as it were, by escape from cultivation; but these reverts never were 

 found to be equivalent to Beta marilima or anywhere near it. The 

 Beta vulgaris self-sown and run wild for years, and greatly altered 

 from its cultivated condition, yet invariably retained a character of its 

 own; so that no one would think of calling it Beta tnaritinm; therefore, 

 with Linnaeus the collection of the varieties of cultivation must be 

 admitted as forming a distinct species of which the native original was 

 unknown, and probably long ages ago extinct. To this view of the 

 case he was perhaps inclined; yet not so strongly as to preclude his 

 offering, in a note, this very different suggestion: "Possibly born of 

 Beta maritima in some foreign country.'"* The force of this alter- 

 native proposition will be lost to any one who does not recall that, 

 according to the Linnaean account of a variety. Beta vulgaris if it 

 originated from seed of Beta maritima originated not as a variety but 

 as a species; and such an origin as he thinks the cultivated beet may 

 have had from the wild one would amount to nothing less than what 

 is now called a mutation : one of those sudden leaps or transitions from 

 one thing to another which we have been learning to take into account 

 only lately. 



A like instance confronted Linnaeus under the genus Cynara, the 

 type of which genus is the true artichoke, and has been culitvated 

 from no one knows how far anterior to all written records. Under 

 this old type species, Cynara Scolymus, Linnaeus admits three marked 

 varieties. Then he proceeds to name and define a second species, 

 a very distinct one, but with a well authenticated history as having 

 arisen nd come into existence as a seedling of the other species. He 

 intimates that he would have liked to be able to consider it a hybrid,® 

 but as its parentage as a hybrid could apparently lie nowhere but 

 between two of the three varieties of the other species, the fact would 

 remain that it was a species derived not from two parent species but 

 from one alone. It was another of those abruptly derivative species 

 in which Linnaeus was disposed to believe despite those hard half- 

 theologic definitions of his Philosophia Botanica. 



* Species Plantaruni, 2 Ed., p. 322. 

 ° Species Plantarum, 2 Ed., p. 1159. 



