ON HURRYING EVOLUTION 
highly flavored plum on another tree, or if we 
desired to effect a cross between any two selected 
parents, we should find it necessary to do our own 
work of pollenation. 
It would seem that much of the ingenuity 
evident in nature is directed toward a two-fold 
end: 
First, toward producing an endless combination 
of heredities in plants of the same kind—which, 
to give them a name, we may call crosses. 
And second, to prevent the combination of 
things out of kind—which, to distinguish them 
from crosses, we may call hybrids. 
The first aim ensures infinite variation—the 
mixing up of parallel strains of heredity in such a 
way that no two living things are exactly alike, 
and that, in each new balance of tendencies pro- 
duced, there is the possibility of an improvement. 
The second explains why, though all roses differ 
from each other, yet all are roses—why, though 
every living thing has its own individuality, its 
own personality, each bears the unmistakable 
characteristics of its kind. 
“Here and there through nature, nevertheless, 
are hybrids. Are these accidents—the result of 
some carelessness, some lapse?” 
[181] 
