420 THE AMERICAN FARMER. 



reaching backward to Creation, and all the possibilities of future generations of giants like 

 the ancestors. Wonderful, however, as are the powers of that seed, after all they are only 

 possibilities ; other influences must aid or its power and being ends when it falls from the 

 parent tree. &quot;Water must moisten it. and the sun warm it, or it will never even sprout, and 

 if it grows, all through its life, earth and air and sun play each their part and do their work 

 on its plastic nature. 



Heredity gives direction to the growth, but it only partly controls it; all through life 

 those elements which nourish it also modify it, and thus it naturally happens that the new 

 plant is never quite like its parent. It may live in a better soil and grow larger, or be 

 starved and be smaller, or other influences help to shape it, but whatever new character it 

 takes on becomes a part of its being, and then heredity tries to transmit the new character 

 to the next generation. There is one reason why the many individuals which constitute a 

 species should differ among themselves, and why cultivation should tend to make the differ 

 ences still greater, because art can supply conditions to influence growth which a plant grow 

 ing wild would never find. 



There is perhaps also an innate tendency to vary, inherent in living beings, a biological 

 law opposed to heredity, weaker than heredity, always working with it, yet never strong 

 enough to overcome it. This, however, is merely a hypothesis ; personally, I believe in the 

 existence of such a tendency, but many persons hold an opposite opinion. But whatever 

 may be the cause, we see variation both in wild and in cultivated plants not explained by 

 any obvious external cause. I will illustrate: Suppose we go into a field all white with the 

 common ox-eye daisy. Instead of examining to see how near they are alike, as former bot 

 anists used to do, rather let us examine, say a thousand flowers, to see how they differ. All 

 are daisies, but some are larger and some smaller, though growing side by side and nour 

 ished by the same soil and air; some have broad rays, others have narrow ones, some long 

 and others short ones; in some the head is flatter than in others; some have the scales of the 

 calyx closer than others, and so on through every character we examine. Now, experi 

 ment has abundantly proved that if we select plants having any one variation, plant its seeds 

 and from the next generation again select the plants having that same peculiarity in the most 

 marked degree, we will find that from generation to generation the successive crops, or at 

 least some of each crop, will vary in that direction more and more from the original form, 

 and in a few generations, more or less, we will make a new variety having that peculiarity in 

 an exaggerated degree. We add up the slight variations until we have a large sum repre 

 sented, and then this is a variety. I say this has been abundantly proved by experiment, and 

 our gardens and fields are filled with the results. What the possibilities are of thus accu 

 mulating special character, no one knows; on its possibilities is based the Darwinian 

 hypothesis. 



What its applications are the race has known perhaps for thousands of years, for on it is 

 founded, practically, the only means we have of improving any variety after it is once in 

 existence.&quot; 



There is probably no doubt that the unnatural and changeable conditions associated with 

 domestication have more of a tendency to induce variations in organisms, than the conditions 

 associated with a state of nature, hence, ds a rule, wild animals breed truer than those 

 domesticated, and there are fewer variations. Analogous variation is a term applied to those 

 cases in which varieties of one species resemble distinct but allied species. Whenever this 

 occurs it is supposed to be due to the two species having originated from the same source, or 

 from their having a common progenitor, hence the modifying causes evolve similar varieties 

 because of the similarity of the material which these forces have to act upon. Analogous 

 variation is therefore closely allied to reversion. 



It is evident that organisms propagated by sexual reproduction are generally most 



