l6 DARWINISM. 



competent persons. Were strawberry-leaves of as much 

 importance in horticulture as they are in heraldry, many 

 fine varieties would soon be exhibited. As soon as the 

 most minute tendency to vary in any particular direc- 

 tion has been descried in any living 1 creature, the fancier 

 can exaggerate the difference to an extent inconceiv- 

 able to the inexperienced. As a popular illustration 

 of this we may take the Big Gooseberry, which fills 

 so large a space in the newspapers when Parliament 

 is prorogued. A gooseberry has been grown weighing 

 more than 37 pennyweights that is, nearly two ounces 1 . 

 But mere size is not a fair test of the extreme plasticity 

 of living organisms. You may have your trees growing 

 stiffly upright, or with pendulous branches and prostrate 

 stems; you may have your cattle long-horned, short- 

 horned, or with no horns at all ; your rabbits straight- 

 eared or lop-eared; your fowls with every variety of 

 comb and crest and wattles and plumage ; and your 

 pigeons pretty well at discretion. A type is prefigured, 

 and the fancier produces it ; and what is done for 

 amusement with pigeons, is done for food, for profit, 

 for the good of mankind at large, by the grower of 

 corn, by the breeder of sheep, by all the wise produce- 

 masters of the world 2 . 



Such is Artificial Selection ; but man is after all but 

 one of Nature's works, and one of her numerous agents. 



1 37 dwts. 7 grs., or 895 grs., between seven and eight times the 

 size of the wild fruit. See 'Animals and Plants under iJomestication,' 

 vol. i. p. 356. 



2 Darwin, ' Animals and Plants under Domestication,' passim. 



