TRUE DARWINISM 165 



the seed in a light soil the long form prevailed, while in a stiff 

 soil the turnip-rooted was predominant. Moreover, in five 

 years he obtained a great variety : in the light soil only white 

 and rose-coloured roots appeared ; but elsewhere, besides 

 violet and very dark or almost black, there were others, as he 

 says, " de toutes les couleurs et de toutes les formes possibles ". 



The late Mr. Jas. Buckman,i Professor of Natural History 

 at the Royal College of Agriculture, Cirencester, carried out 

 similar experiments with cabbages, carrots and parsnips, com- 

 mencing in the year 1847. In 1850 he had succeeded in 

 raising three distinct types of parsnip from the seed of wild 

 plants. He describes them as follows : (i) The round-topped, 

 long-rooted form, resembling the Guernsey parsnip {Panais 

 long of the French). (2) The hollow-crowned long-root ; 

 " Hollow-headed " of gardeners {^Panais Lisbonais type). (3) 

 The short, thick, turnip-shaped root, or "turnip-rooted" of 

 gardeners {Fa?iais rond form). He finally continued his ex- 

 periments with the second only, which he called, " The 

 Student ", Messrs. Sutton & Sons on receiving seed from 

 Prof. Buckman still further "improved" it, and it is now con- 

 sidered, after fifty years of cultivation, the best in the trade. 



The differences presented by garden races are not strictly 

 " varietal " as a rule, i.e., in the sense which a systematic 

 botanist would apply the term ; but " individual differences," 

 only slightly exaggerated, as compared with the fluctuating 

 individual differences of wild plants. 



Sir J. D. Hooker, for instance, in alluding to cabbages 

 under Brassica oleracea in his Student's Flora calls them 

 " Forms ". 



Mr. W. B. Scott, in a paper on "Variations and Mutations,'"^ 

 observes: " Bateson's entire argument is founded upon the 

 assumption that individual variations form the material out of 

 which species are constructed, an assumption which has almost 

 passed into an axiom ". 



'^Journ. Roy. Agric. Soc. 0/ England, vol. xv., pt. i, p. 125, 1854. 

 ^Amer. Jonrn. Sci., 3rd ser., xlviii., 1894, p. 355, 



