;V.] ARTIFICIAL SPECIES NOT ACCEPTED. 109 



at once exclaims that it is not a species, but a horticul- 

 tural variety. If I ask him why, he replies, "Because 

 it is an artificial production ! " If I show him that the 

 type is just as distinct from the species from which it 

 sprung as that species is from its related species, and 

 that it reproduces its kind with just as much certainty, 

 he still replies that, because it is a horticultural produc- 

 tion, it cannot be a species. In what, then, does an 

 accidental horticultural origin differ from any other 

 origin ! Simply in the fact that one takes place under 

 the eye of man and the other occurs somewhere else ! 

 It is impossible at the present day to make a definition 

 of a species which shall exclude many horticultural 

 types, unless an arbitrary exception is made of them. 

 The old definitions assumed that species are special cre- 

 ative acts, and the method of origin is therefore stated 

 or implied in all of them. The definition itself, there- 

 fore, was essentially a statement of the impossibility of 

 evolution. We have now revised our definitions so as 

 to exclude the matter of origin, and thereby to allow 

 free course to evolution studies; and yet here is a great 

 class of natural objects which are practically eliminated 

 from our consideration because, unhappily, we know 

 whence they came ! Or, to state the case differently, 

 these types cannot be accepted as proofs of the trans- 

 formation of species because we know certainly that 

 they are the result of transformation ! 



Now, just this state of things would be sure to occur 

 if De Varigny were to transform one species into an- 

 other. People would say that the new form is not really 

 a species, because it is the result of cultivation, domes- 

 tication, and definite breeding by man. He could never 

 hope to secure more remarkable transformations than 



