NOTE ON HYBRIDISM IN YEGETABLES. 569 



various ways, and give rise to new forms, which acquire at length, 

 either by artificial or natural selection, a certain degree of stabiUty, 

 and are even reproduced in many cases with the same fidelity as 

 types originally specific. There is scarcely a single species, which 

 has been cultivated from remote antiquity, which has remained per- 

 fectly uniform and which has not been divided into secondary forms 

 sufficiently distinct from each other to be easily recognised by every 

 common observer. "Wheat, the vine, the olive tree, the date palm, 

 cabbages, onions, kidney-beans, gourds, &c., oifer examples which 

 are known to every one. These secondary or derivative forms which 

 render primitive species real groups analogous to our botanical 

 genera, are properly speaking what are designated under the names 

 of races and varieties, terms accepted by science, which applies 

 them to forms slightly contrasted, but which have remained wild, 

 and over which man has never exercised any modifying influence. 



It may be objected indeed that these pretended derivative forms 

 are merely true species occurring primitively in nature, exactly as 

 we see them now, and that neither the processes of cultivation, nor 

 the different circumstances of soil and climate through which man 

 has caused them to pass, has modified them in the slightest degree. 

 But this objection, in addition to its being extremely improbable, 

 since none of these forms which may be counted by thousands occur 

 in a wild state, does not hold against that other fact, that we see new 

 forms arise in modern times, and that species of recent introduction, 

 as the potato, Indian corn, the dahlia, the China-aster, and hundreds 

 of other plants but lately introduced, offer the same phenomenon of 

 variation from the typical form. There can therefore be no doubt 

 of the inherent capability of natural species to be sab-divided into 

 secondary forms, into varieties, or to speak more philosophically into 

 species of an inferior dignity y which with time, when they are pre- 

 served free from impregnation mth other sub-species of the same 

 origin, acquire all the stability of character presented by old 

 species. 



Is this phenomenon then limited to species submitted to cultiva- 

 tion, and does it necessarily require the intervention of man to pro- 

 duce them ? I do not think so ; it seems to me on the contrary 

 infinitely more probable, that it has taken place in nature on a 

 much wider scale than in the narrow domain of our industry, where 

 even at the present day, natural agents, such as soil, light, heat, 

 atmospheric conditions, &c., are the principal agents. I regard then, 

 N.II.R.— 18G5. 2 Q 



