Evolution: The Quest of Truth 157 



origins ; but he insisted, although himself an 

 evolutionist, that my having caught the plant 

 in the act was enough to outcast the form which 

 had had the presumption to appear. My ethical 

 friend had shown me the sinfulness of my little 

 fact, and now the scientist had told me that ob- 

 servation is heresy ; but the strawberry thrived. 

 It does not matter to the strawberry or to 

 me whether it gave rise to a new " species " 

 or not. It was a new form or a new kind ; 

 and this simple experiment enabled me, as I 

 verily believed, to reconstruct the genealogy 

 of the garden strawberry. It is apparently a 

 modification of the Chilean strawberry, intro- 

 duced into Europe by Captain Frezier about 

 1712. The unnoticed modification of this 

 strawberry, under cultivation, had added one 

 more species to the infinitude of species ; but 

 my accidental discovery that the species was ap- 

 parently the result of modification has stricken 

 that species from the lists ; and thenceforth the 

 backslider, if mentioned at all in reputable sys- 

 tematic botanies, must be only a variety or form 

 of Fragaria Chiloensis. And what has occurred 



