LINN&US AS AN EVOLUTIONIST 85 



altered from its cultivated condition, yet 

 invariably retained a character of its own; 

 so that no one would think of calling it Beta 

 maritima; therefore, with Linnaeus the col- 

 lection of the varieties of cultivation must be 

 admitted as forming a distinct species of 

 which the native original was unknown, and 

 probably long ages ago extinct. To this 

 view of the case he was perhaps inclined; yet 

 not so strongly as to preclude his offering, in 

 a note, this very different suggestion: "Pos- 

 sibly born of Beta maritima in some foreign 

 country." 1 The force of this alternative prop- 

 osition will be lost to any one who does not 

 recall that, according to the Linnsean account 

 of a variety, Beta vulgaris, if it originated from 

 seed of Beta maritima, originated not as a 

 variety but as a species; and such an origin 

 as he thinks the cultivated beet may have had 

 from the wild one would amount to nothing 

 less than what is now called a mutation; one 

 of those sudden leaps or transitions from one 

 thing to another which we have been learning 

 to take into account only lately. 



A like instance confronted Linnaeus under 

 the genus Cynara, the type of which genus 



1 Species Plantarum, 2 ed., p. 322. 



