616 Transactions. — Miscdlaneous. 



can limit the changes of form and colour in, say, roses, chrysan- 

 themums, ixias, sparaxias, eucalypti, or any order we care to 

 comment upon ? A short time since the chrysanthemum was 

 only a button in size in our gardens. Now it is cultivated 

 into huge blooms of all manner of shape and colour — incurved, 

 outcurved, deep-red, golden, &c. We make shows now of the 

 variation of this one flower. Lately, too, we are producing 

 green and black roses. Will any person venture to say that 

 these variations are not laid down upon strictly rigid lines of 

 outcome — that it is, in fact, possible for us here to create one 

 single variation by the most careful selection neiv to the uni- 

 verse — that we can, in fact, produce any one new variety? 

 I scarcely think so. I feel convinced that the lines of develop- 

 ment have long since been settled, and man but opens the lid 

 of the magic box which contains them. By selection he pro- 

 duces flower-models new to him, perhaps, but so old that the 

 age of this very earth is but a moment in the time of their 

 life. 



I wish to point out now that there appears to me to be a 

 certain order in this power of divergence. Thus in each 

 species there are subtypes of a fixed type. For example, let 

 any person take a thousand photographs of English faces. 

 He will find to his surprise that it is quite easy to arrange 

 these pictures according to their subtypes ; but, nevertheless, 

 no two are exactly alike. The same with sheep, dogs, horses, 

 chrysanthemums. K beautiful pair of well-matched carriage- 

 horses is another instance. We admire them very much, 

 and say they are well matched ; but the driver or groom 

 knows what a vast difference there is betw^een the two 

 animals when he attends to them in their stable. As to a 

 perfectly-matched four-in-hand team, we scarcely ever expect 

 to see that, even out of the millions of horses there are in 

 Europe. But, still, horses follow their subtypes sufficiently 

 for us to say they are fairly matched. 



Eor brevity's sake, I need not follow the rule of this law 

 into the insect world. The microscope will no doubt reveal 

 its ruling there just as fully as our eyes tell us it rules in the 

 species and orders I have already named. I might refer in 

 this section to the fact that I have made a small collection of 

 different forms of coral from the South Sea coral-reefs (Pacific 

 Ocean), and the variation of form in this collection is very sur- 

 prising. Nearly all the forms follow the mode of structure of 

 plants. But why plant-life should thus be copied by the coral 

 polypi beneath the sea is strange. Doubtless the branching 

 method of growth is the best and only form of rapid building- 

 up. But nothing shows to my mind the w^onderful guiding- 

 power of the force I speak of more than the coral polyp build- 

 ing out its branches beneath the sea — branches similar to the 



