THE LAWS OF VARIABILITY. 61 



their stripes, not their own parents, but other species of 

 the genus. To admit this view is, as it seems to me, to 

 reject a real for an unreal, or at least for an unknown, 

 cause. It makes the works of God a mere mockery and 

 deception ; I would almost as soon believe with the old 

 and ignorant cosmogonists, that fossil shells had never 

 lived, but had been created in stone so as to mock the 

 shells living on the sea-shore. 



VARIABILITY OF CULTIVATED PLAXTS. 



, , I shall not enter into so much detail on 



Animals and , 



Plants, vol. the variability of cultivated plants as in the 

 i, page 322. case f domesticated animals. The subject is 

 involved in much difficulty. Botanists have generally 

 neglected cultivated varieties, as beneath their notice. In 

 several cases the wild prototype is unknown or doubtfully 

 known ; and in other cases it is hardly possible to distin- 

 guish between escaped seedlings and truly wild plants, so 

 that there is no safe standard of comparison by which to 

 judge of any supposed amount of change. Not a few 

 botanists believe that several of our anciently cultivated 

 plants have become so profoundly modified that it is not 

 possible now to recognize their aboriginal parent-forms. 

 Equally perplexing are the doubts whether some of them 

 are descended from one species, or from several inextrica- 

 bly commingled by crossing and variation. Variations 

 often pass into, and can not be distinguished from, mon- 

 strosities ; and monstrosities are of little significance for 

 our purpose. Many varieties are propagated solely by 

 grafts, buds, layers, bulbs, etc., and frequently it is not 

 known how far their peculiarities can be transmitted by 

 seminal generation. 



