24 THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 



variations are here often more abrupt. No one supposes 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 gooseberry may be quoted. We see an astonishing im- 

 provement in many florists' flowers, when the flowers of the pres- 

 ent day are compared with drawings made only twenty or thirty 

 years ago. When 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, in 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 ac- 

 cumulated effects of selection — namely, by comparing the diver- 

 sity 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 flow- 

 ers 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 cab- 

 bage are, and how extremely alike the flowers; how unlike the 

 flowers 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 hairiness, and yet the flowers present very slight dif- 

 ferences. 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 correlated variation, the importance of which should never 

 be overlooked, will insure some differences; but, as a general rule, 

 it cannot be doubted that the continued selection of slight varia- 

 tions, either in the leaves, the flowers, or the fruit, will produce 

 races differing from each other chiefly in these characters. 



It may be objected that the principle of selection has been re- 

 duced to methodical practice for scarcely more than three-quarters 

 of a century; it has certainly been more attended to of late years, 

 and many treatises have been published on the subject; and the 

 result has been, in a corresponding degree, rapid and important. 

 But it is very far from true that the principle is a modern discov- 

 ery. I could give several references to works of high antiquity, in 

 which the full importance of the principle is acknowledged. In 

 rude and barbarous periods of English history choice animals were 



