420 REVERSION QUESTIONED. chap. xxi. 



Avbich 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 

 conditions, 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 w\\\ 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, sjDCcies in general do not 

 readih^ 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 ai'c those last j)roduced by the 

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

 show no disj)Osition, when neglected, to assume the charac- 

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

 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 gi'eat extent to which the internal 

 characters and properties of plants, or their physiological 

 constitution, are capable of being modified, while they exhibit 



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



