100 Selection Does not Lead to Origin of Species. 



can be achieved within half a century by continued selec- 

 tion in one and the same direction, hand in hand with 

 continual improvement of method. 



Progress has been enormous : the average content 

 of the common beet, which at first was a matter of 

 7-8%, is now double that amount. Shape, size, and 

 w^eight, the character of the leaves and especially the 

 reduction in woody tissues have all been the object of 

 selection, and have made the beet much more valuable 

 from the industrial point of view. 



All this has been done by selection of the best indi- 

 viduals afforded by ordinary fluctuating variation. Nei- 

 ther spontaneous variations nor crossings have played 

 any part in it. We are dealing here with the process in 

 its simplest form. 



This is not the place to praise the genius of Louis 

 ViLMORiN^ the founder of the method, or the achieve- 

 ments of his numerous successors especially in Germany. 

 Nor need I describe the marvelous technical process by 

 which it is possible to determine the polarization indices 

 of more than 100,000 beets in a few weeks. ^ 



On the contrary I am only concerned with showing 

 how^ little value these splendid results have in the discussion 

 of the process of the origin of species. On the botanical 

 side no better argument for the theory of selection could 

 be adduced. Yet in this case there is nothing which is 

 in the remotest degree like the origin of a new^ species 

 nor even anything that could lead us to expect that any 

 form of the systematic value of a species could arise in 

 this wav. 



^ I particularaly recommend to the scientific reader the study of 

 Prof. Kurt von Rumker's short and clear paper: Die Zuckerriiben- 

 zdichiung dcr Gegenwart. (Blatter fiir Zuckerriibenbau, 1894, PP- 

 1-48.) 



