140 THE SURVIVAL OF THE UNLIKE. [v. 



ten million species of insects in the world would be, in 

 my judgment, a moderate estimate." 



An enumeration of all the known animals and plants 

 of the world almost necessarily aroused a desire to know 

 whence and why they came ; hence we find a school of 

 speculative naturalists arising in the latter part of the 

 last century, whose heretical and unholy unrest cul- 

 minated in the philosophies of Lamarck and Darwin. 



This analytical mind could have found its most 

 abundant and suggestive material in the study of culti- 

 vated plants, but the old ideas of the entity and immu- 

 tability of species had taken such firm hold upon men 

 that thej'^ could not completely shake off the influences 

 of tradition and habit ; therefore, garden plants, being so 

 endlessly variable, could not represent or express natural 

 laws. It is probable, also, that the very variety in culti- 

 vated plants was so perplexing as to repel the student. 

 They present a boundless extent of detail which, with 

 no fundamental conception of the method of the unfold- 

 ing of the vegetable kingdom, meant nothing to the 

 philosopher. 



It is significant that all the early attempts to explain 

 the origin of domestic varieties were made for the bene- 

 fit of the horticulturist, and not primarily to elucidate 

 the genealogy of plants. This remark is worth the 

 making, because it really explains why the early theories 

 failed, — because they conceived, almost uniformly, that 

 a philosophy of the genesis of garden varieties has no 

 necessary connection with the general uplift and disper- 

 sion of the vegetable kingdom. Horticulturists were 

 looking for some secret key, some alchemy, by means 

 of which the cultivator ('ould unlock or dissolve the 

 barriers and bring forth plants to his liking. It was a 



