UNCONSCIOUS SELECTION 51 



whether or not sufficiently distinct to be ranked at their first 

 appearance as distinct varieties, and whether or not two or 

 more species or races have become blended together by cross- 

 ing, may plainly be recognised in the increased size and beauty 

 which we now see in the varieties of the heartsease, rose, 

 pelargonium, dahlia, and other plants, when compared with 

 the older varieties or with their parent-stocks. No one would 

 ever expect to get a first-rate heartsease or dahlia from the 

 seed of a wild plant. No one would expect to raise a first- 

 rate melting pear from the seed of the wild pear, though he 

 might succeed from a poor seedling growing wild, if it had 

 come from a garden-stock. The pear though cultivated in 

 classical times, appears, from Pliny's description, to have 

 been a fruit of very inferior quality. I have seen great sur- 

 prise expressed in horticultural works at the wonderful skill 

 of gardeners, in having produced such 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 un- 

 consciously. 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 onwards. 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 pre- 

 served the best varieties they could anywhere find. 



A large amount of change, thus slowly and unconsciously 

 accumulated, explains, as I believe, the well-known fact, that 

 in a number of cases we cannot recognise, and therefore do 

 not know, the wild parent-stocks of the plants which have 

 been longest cultivated in our flower and kitchen gardens. 

 If 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 in- 

 habited by quite uncivilised 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 



