28 SELECTION B Y MAN, 



lifetime to it witli indomitable perseverance, he will suc- 

 ceed, and may make great improvements; if he wants any 

 of these qualities, he will assuredly fail. Few would read- 

 ily believe in the natural capacity and years of practice 

 requisite to become even a skillful pigeon-fancier,>^ 



The same principles are followed by horticulturi:;ts; but 

 the variations are here often more abrupt. No one sup- 

 poses that our choicest productions have been produced by 

 a single variation from the aboriginal stock. We have 

 proofs that this has not been so in several cases in which 

 exact records have been kept; thus, to give a very trifling 

 instance, the steadily increasing size of the common goose- 

 berry may be quoted. We see an astonishing improvement 

 in many florists' flowers, when the flowers of the present 

 day are compared with drawings made only twenty or 

 thirty years ago. -^ W^hen a race of plants is once pretty well 

 established, the seed-raisers do not pick out the best plants, 

 but merely go over their seed-beds, and pull up the 

 ** rogues, '' as they call the plants that deviate from the 

 proper standard. With animals this kind of selection is, 

 m fact, likewise followed; for hardly any one is so careless 

 as to breed from his worst animals.- 



In regard to plants, there is another means of observing 

 the accumulated effects of selection — namely, by comparing 

 the diversity of flowers in the different varieties of the same 

 species in the flower garden; the diversity of leaves, pods, 

 or tubers, or whatever part is valued, in the kitchen-garden, 

 in comparison with the flowers of the same varieties; and 

 the diversity of fruit of the same species in the orchard, in 

 comparison with the leaves and flowers of the same set of 

 varieties. See how different the leaves of the cabbage are, 

 and how extremely alike the flowers; how unlike the flow- 

 ers of the heartsease are, and how alike the leaves; how 

 much the fruit of the different kinds of gooseberries differ 

 in size, color, shape and hairyness, and yet the flowers pre- 

 sent very slight differences. It is not that the varieties 

 which differ largely in some one point do not differ at all 

 in other points; this is hardly ever — I speak after careful 

 observation — perhaps never, the case. The law of corre- 

 lated variation, the importance cf which should never be 

 overlooked, will insure: some dif erences; but, as a general 

 rule, it cannot be doubted that the continued selection of 



