species mid Specific Characters. 185 



the first C actus-T)3h\\2i. All efforts to find the same form, 

 in the district where my correspondent lived, were in 

 vain."^ The plant was there; but how it arose we do 

 not know. 



It is just the same in many other cases, and with the 

 most important types too. The breeder is delighted when 

 he sees a new form ; but as to how it arises he is generally 

 ignorant. It often happens that they arise singly in 

 sowings on an enormous scale ; in which there is a greater 

 likelihood that the seeds will be of different stocks, than 

 in small ones. In this way D. B. Wier got his cutleaved 

 maple in a sowing of about a milHon seedlings.^ And in 

 the same way Donkelaar got the first double Dahlias 

 in a culture of about 10,000 plants, and so forth. 



There is no object in citing more instances especially 

 as most of the early ones are to be found in Darwin^s 

 works. 



We may conclude therefore that even among culti- 

 vated plants, species are mixtures ; consisting, as they do, 

 of independent often numerous sorts of subspecies which 

 have been found as such in the wild state. This fact is 

 well known to many breeders and botanists : though the 

 earlier botanists were more familiar with it than modern 

 ones are. Hence the often repeated saying,^ 'Tf you 

 want to raise a novelty you must first possess it!" 



§ 24. SPECIES AND SPECIFIC CHARACTERS. 



The reader is now in a position to understand what 

 I mean when I say that our business is not really with 



^ See Van den Berg, in Gardeners' Chronicle, Nov. 8, 1879; and 

 W. Miller, The Dahlia, in Bull. Ithaca, No. 128, p. 127. 



^L. H. Bailey, Plant-breeding, 1896, p. 109. 



^ Jordan, Arhres, fruitiers, p. 96. 



