NEW VARIETIES. 227 







is centered in himself. His care for the perpetuation of the 

 plant is only secondary. If he cannot make it useful to him- 

 self he does not want to perpetuate it. His purpose is not 

 general, like that of Nature, but specific; it relates only to 

 human needs and human uses. His work is far less diffuse 

 than that of Nature, and to the exact degree of this concen- 

 tration is his work more rapid than hers. How long would 

 it have taken Nature to have produced a primus berry, a 

 citrange or a plumcot? The chances would seem to be as a 

 billion to one that she never would have produced these spe- 

 cies, judging by the ages throughout which she has already 

 left the work undone. 



In the third place, while Nature goes forward towards the 

 completion of her own great plan with unerring accuracy, 

 she seems to have such a superabundance of material a 

 million seeds are probably lost where one takes root and grows 

 to maturity and such immeasurable time, that very many 

 of her acts are what we term fortuitous. From our stand- 

 point she depends largely upon chance, often upon the re- 

 motest chance. The fertilization of plants, for illustration, 

 is left to the bees. In seeking honey they become dusted with 

 pollen, the fertilizing element, carrying it from flower to 

 flower. Or again, this work is left to the wind. We must 

 admit that within limits, and for those purposes which Na- 

 ture seems to have in view, these means are marvelously ef- 

 fective; but considering man as removed from the scene of 

 action, and leaving Nature wholly to her own devices, how 

 long would it have taken her to establish sea-island cotton 

 on the coast of South Carolina from its home in the islands 

 of the Southern seas; how long to have brought grain from 

 the wheat fields of Russia and crossed it with wheat which 



