14 Selection and Mutation. 



from memory in such a manner as best suits the pur- 

 poses of advertisement. "It goes without saying," he 

 said, ''that after three or four years one can no longer 

 remember one's single fertilizations and selections." 

 Many other well-known breeders have expressed them- 

 selves to me in similar terms. ^ 



If we collect all that is known with absolute certainty 

 about the ''How" of the origin of our innumerable 

 garden plants, the result is extraordinarily meagre. Con- 

 cerning the vast majority of them we do not know any 

 more than that they exist ; in the case of others the firm 

 which put them on the market is known, and the year 

 of their introduction ; but the names of their raisers are 

 usually kept secret especially where one is dealing with 

 cases in which the crosses have not been performed pur- 

 posely. And the question as to how the new forms arose, 

 on the answer to which the value of this evidence as bear- 

 ing on the theory of selection depends, can very seldom 

 be answered. Public statements are dictated by exigen- 

 cies of advertisement. It is often only found possible 

 to maintain a well-defined improved race on the market 

 by crediting it with further improvement. All such 

 statements therefore require careful scrutiny before they 

 can be utilized as scientific evidence. 



I am far from blaming breeders in this matter. It 

 is to friendly intercourse with many of them that I owe 

 in great measure my information on this subject. What 

 I object to is the application by others of the results at- 

 tained by breeders to questions for which they were 

 neither intended nor devised. It was Darwin's insight 



^ RiJMKER refers in strong terms to the difficulties which may 

 arise from regarding the grossly exaggerated ilhistrations in seed 

 catalogues as faithful records of the things depicted. See "Der 

 zvirthschaftliche Mehrwerth guter Culiurvarietdten, 1898, p. 2 



