VARIATION UNDER DOMESTICATION 27 



In plants the same gradual process of improvement through the 

 occasional preservation of the best, individuals, whether or not suf- 

 ficiently distinct to be ranked at their first appearance as distinct 

 varieties, and whether or not two or more species or races have be- 

 come blended together by crossing, may plainly be recognized in 

 the increased size and beauty which we now see in the varieties of 

 the heart's-ease, 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 heart's-ease 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 suc- 

 ceed from a poor seedling growing wild, if it had come from a 

 garden-stock. The pear, though cultivated in classical times, ap- 

 pears, from Pliny's description, to have been a fruit of very inferior 

 quality. I have seen great surprise expressed in horticultural works 

 at the wonderful skill of gardeners in having produced such splen- 

 did results from such poor materials; but the art has been simple, 

 and, as far as the final result is concerned, has been followed almost 

 unconsciously. 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 

 anywhere find. 



A lar.ge amount of change, thus slowly and unconsciously ac- 

 cumulated, explains, as I 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 culti- 

 vated 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 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 im- 

 proved by continued selection up to a standard of perfection com- 

 parable with that acquired by the plants in countries anciently 

 civilized. 



In regard to the domestic animals kept by uncivilized man, it 

 should not be overlooked that they almost always have to struggle 



