124 COLLS CLOUT'S CALENDAR. 



bed between the fingers ? I hardly know which expla- 

 nation is the more likely ; for the common double rose 

 of our gardens, which is probably a distorted variety of 

 the French wild rose from the Mediterranean region, 

 with its central stamens overfed into irregular and super- 

 numerary petals, has certainly been grown for ornament 

 since a very early period in English flower-beds. From 

 that South European stock we get our cabbage-rose and 

 our moss-roses ; the China roses descend from an Asiatic 

 species ; while the dear old-fashioned Scotch roses, too 

 often turned out of our gardens now by the new-fangled 

 oriental varieties, are cultivated forms of the little burnet 

 rose, that grows abundantly in sandy districts on our own 

 western seaboard. All of them, however, will produce 

 hybrids readily with one another, and with various newer 

 Asiatic or American kinds : and it is selected varieties 

 of these hybrids that make up the mass of our modern 

 over-civilized garden strains. 



Indeed, people generally have very little idea how 

 many distinct species of plants or animals exist in each 

 great group, or how absolutely they all merge into each 

 other for the most part by insensible gradations, It is 

 the inadequate recognition of such facts that makes us 

 less able to realize the steps by which species change from 

 form to form as circumstances demand of them. Almost 

 all the most familiar animals happen to be very distinct 

 from one another, and from all the wild animals inhabit- 

 ing Europe ; and this gives us a false idea to start with 

 of the stability of species. There is no danger of mis- 

 taking a horse for a donkey, or a sheep for a cow. But 

 then we too often forget that these animals are purposely 

 bred as true as possible to an artificial standard ; while 

 all intermediate links with other kinds have been killed 

 off the soil in civilized countries at least by the spread 



