The Transformation of Plants. 391 



unlike are the alpha and omega of this experiment, that bot- 

 anists, with one consent, have placed them in distinct gen- 

 era, and yet the plants are shown, by the plainest evidence, 

 not only to belong to the same genus, but even to the same 

 species. 



The value of modern genera and species in botany is wo- 

 fully shaken by this revelation ; faith in those lower classes 

 of botanical distinctions, which have been said to represent 

 permanent natural differences, is gone ; and it is to be hoped 

 that refinements in classification, as they have been absurdly 

 called, have received their covp de grace. The ingenious 

 gentlemen who have believed that 20 species of Aconite are 

 confounded under Napellus, half-a-hundred Willows under 

 Salix caprea, and as many species of Rubus under R. coryli- 

 folius, may burn their books, for their trifling distinctions can 

 hardly continue to find admirers after the proof than an 

 -J]gilops and Wheat are the same species. For our own 

 part, we console ourselves with the belief that botany will be 

 thus restored to the condition of an intelligible science ; and 

 we congratulate those who, like Bentham, Hooker, and oth- 

 ers, have for a quarter of a century carried on an unsuccess- 

 ful war with hair-splitting contemporaries, upon the final 

 triumph of their principles. 



Passing by this point of view, we may also suggest that 

 other unsuspected instances of the same kind are very likely 

 to occur. We are ignorant of the origin of rye ; but rye is 

 less different from wheat than is ^gilops, and may very well 

 be another ^gilopian form. So again of barley, the wild 

 state of which is just as uncertain ; we may now expect that 

 some clever experimenter will trace it to an origin as sur- 

 prising as that of wheat. But these are matters of mere 

 scientific interest. Let us see to what practical inferences 

 M. Fabre's discovery may lead. 



This gentleman found that a kind of wild grass (^gilops 

 ovata) was subject to what gardeners call "a sport" {JS. 

 triticoides.) Of that sport he sowed the seeds, and he found 

 that while on the one hand there was no disposition to return 

 to its original form, there was on the other hand a decided 



