204 THE SURVIVAL OP THE UNLIKE. [iX. 



but that it is making very rapidly. I may say here 

 that I care little for any facts or illustrations of pro- 

 gress merely as facts. There must be some law. some 

 tendency, some profound movement underlying it all, 

 and this we must discover. I shall not attempt, there- 

 fore, to indicate how great the progress has been in any 

 definite time, but endeavor to ascertain if there is pro- 

 gression which gains impetus with the years. 



1. There is a progressive variation in plants. Horti- 

 culture is concerned with the cultivation of plants. The 

 plant is the beginning and the end. For the plant we 

 till the soil, build greenhouses, and transact the busi- 

 ness of the garden. All progress, therefore, rests upon 

 the possibility of securing better varieties, — those pos- 

 sessing greater intrinsic merit in themselves, or better 

 adaptations to certain purposes or regions. In other 

 words, all progress rests upon the fact that evolution 

 is still operative, that garden plants, like wild animals 

 and plants, are more or less constantly undergoing 

 modification. 



American horticulture may be said to have begun 

 with the opening of the century. It was in 1806 that 

 Bernard M'Mahon wrote his "Ameri(;an Gardener's 

 Calendar." This work contains a catalogue of three 

 thousand seven hundred "species and varieties of the 

 most valuable and curious plants hitherto discov- 

 ered." Among the cultivated varieties of fruits and 

 vegetables, the present reader will see few familiar 

 names. He will observe among the fruits, however, 

 some American types, showing that even at that date 

 American pomology had begun to diverge from the 

 English and French which gave it birth. This is espe- 

 cially true of the apples, for of the fifty- nine kinds in 



