420 REVERSION QUESTIONED. CHAP. xxi. 



which it may have lost when under domestication. If these 

 faculties are so much enfeebled as to be irrecoverable, it will 

 perish ; if not, and if it can adapt itself to the surrounding con 

 ditions, it will revert to the state in which man first found it ; 

 for in one, two, or three thousand years, which may have 

 elapsed since it was originally tamed, there will not have 

 been time for such geographical, climatal, and organic changes, 

 as would only be suited to a new race, or a new and allied 

 species. 



But in regard to plants, Dr. Hooker questions the fact of 

 reversion. According to him, species in general do not 

 readily vary, but when they once begin to do so, the new 

 varieties, as every horticulturist knows, show a great inclina 

 tion to go on departing more and more from the old stock. 

 As the best marked varieties of a wild species occur on the 

 confines of the area which it inhabits, so the best marked 

 varieties of a cultivated plant, are those last produced by the 

 gardener. Cabbages, for example, wall fruit, and cerealia, 

 show no disposition, when neglected, to assume the charac 

 ters of the wild states of these plants. Hence the difficulty of 

 determining what are the true parent species of most of our 

 cultivated plants. Thus the finer kinds of apples, if grown 

 from seed, degenerate and become crabs, but in so doing 

 they do not revert to the original wild crab-apple, but 

 become crab states of the varieties to which they belong.* 



It would lead me into too long a digression, were I to 

 attempt to give a fuller analysis of this admirable essay ; but 

 I may add, that none of the observations are more in point, 

 as bearing on the doctrine of what Hooker terms ' creation 

 by variation,' than the great extent to which the internal 

 characters and properties of plants, or their physiological 

 constitution are capable of being modified, while they exhibit 



* Introductory Essay, Flora of Australia, p. ix. 



