12 The Significance of HorticitUural Varieties. 



English breeder, William Paul, says:^ ''He who is 

 seeking to improve any class of plants, should watch 

 narrowly and seize with alacrity any deviation from the 



fixed character However unpromising in appearance 



at the outset, he knows not what issues may lie concealed 

 in a variation." Salter also said that the greatest diffi- 

 culty lies in finding a small initial deviation ; but when this 

 has once been found all the rest lies within our power, 

 however small the variation mav be. And Darwin, who 

 cites this,^ always emphasized its great importance when- 

 ever he had occasion to refer to it. 



In other words, which we have already often quoted : 

 The main condition necessary to produce a novelty is to 

 be in possession of its first step. 



And yet as is well known the attempt Is not by any 

 means alwavs successful. Sometimes the variation dis- 

 appears without leaving a trace behind ; in which case of 

 course all further efforts to deal with it are in vain. 



Unfixable deviations of this kind are, according to 

 my experience, the occasional manifestation of latent 

 characters. What the breeder wants to find are those 

 cases in which the chance anomaly has already become 

 a heritable although hidden race. \i this has happened 

 the anomaly will, in the first place, easily manifest itself, 

 if the conditions of life are not quite unfavorable and in 

 the second can rapidly be developed to the level of a good 

 horticultural variety. 



So far as the available data enable us to judge, breed- 

 ing experiments of this kind always follow the same 

 course. Hosts of examples can be found. Extensive 



* Confribufions to HorticiiUural Literature, 1892. Nature, Vol. 46, 

 p. 583. 



"^Variations of Animals and Plants, II, p. 249. See also Part I, 

 p. 267 et seq. 



