^Z UNCONSCIOUS SELECTION. 



very inferior qudity. I have seen great surprise expressed 

 in horticultural works at the wonderful skill of gardeners 

 in having produced sucli splendid results from such poor 

 materials; but the art has been simple, and, as far as the 

 final result is concerned, has been followed almost uncon- 

 sciously. It has consisted in always cultivating the best 

 known variety, sowing its seeds, and, when a slightly better 

 variety chanced to appear, selecting it, and so onward. 

 But the gardeners of the classical period, who cultivated 

 the best pears which they could procure, never thought 

 what splendid fruit we should eat; though we owe our 

 excellent fruit in some small degree to their having naturally 

 chosen and preserved the best varieties they could any- 

 where find. 



/a large amount of change, thus slowly and uncon- 

 sciously accumulated, explains, as 1 believe, the well- 

 known fact, that in a number of cases we cannot 

 recognize, and therefore do not know, the wild parent- 

 stocks of the plants which have been longest cultivated 

 in our flower and kitchen gardens. It it has taken 

 centuries or thousands of years to improve or modify most 

 of our plants up to their present standard of usefulness to 

 man, we can understand how it is that neither Australia, 

 the Cape of Good Hope, nor any other region inhabited by 

 quite uncivilized man, has afforded us a single plant worth 

 culture. It is not that these countries, so rich in species, 

 do not by a strange chance possess the aboriginal stocks of 

 any useful plants, but that the native plants have not been 

 improved by continued selection up to a standard of per- 

 fection comparable with that acquired by the plants in 

 countries anciently civilized. 



In regard to tlie domestic animals kept by uncivilized 

 man, it should not be overlooked that they almost always 

 have to struggle for their own food, at least during certain 

 seasons. And in two countries very differently circum- 

 stanced, individuals of the same species, having slightly 

 different constitutions or structure, would often suc- 

 ceed better in the one country than in the other; 

 and thus by a process of *' natural selection,'^ as 

 will hereafter be more fully explained, two sub- 

 breeds might be formed. This, perhaps, partly 

 explains why the varieties kept by savages, as has been 



