APPENDIX. 



/. HOW DID THE VARIETIES OF FRUITS 

 ORIGINATE? 



There Is universal curiosity to know how the various kinds of 

 fruits have originated. It seems to be next to impossible to en- 

 lighten the public mind upon the question, for whatever detailed ex- 

 planation one may give seems to leave the questioner unsatisfied. 

 The real cause of this dissatisfaction is the fact that people assume 

 that there is something mysterious about the process of the origi- 

 nation of varieties; and so long as the mind makes a mystery of 

 a subject it is impossible to elucidate it. We have also been 

 taught that like normally produces like, and therefore that any 

 unlikeness between two plants as between the parent and its off- 

 springcalls for instant explanation. The fact is, that it is not 

 the nature of domestic productions for like to produce like, but 

 rather for similar to produce similar. That is, there are certain 

 type or family characteristics which . pass over to the offspring, but 

 there is normally almost endless unlikenesses in the details. Apples 

 give rise to apples, and sometimes- there is a closer reproduction 

 of the parents in tribes like the Fameuse apples and the Crawford 

 peaches; but there is seldom or never an exact duplication of pa- 

 rental features. Considering that this is the normal law of nature, 

 it follows that the wonder is that plants should ever reproduce the 

 variety with approximate exactness. In other words, rigidity of 

 generation may be the thing to be explained rather than the elas- 

 ticity of it. In kitchen-garden vegetables this rigidity has come about, 

 but it is the direct result of a long effort at selection and breed- 

 ing until the elasticity of the type has been largely bred out.* 



*A fuller explanation of this class of facts will be found on pages 88, 

 89 and 90 of "Plant-Breeding;" and the reader is referred to that work 

 and to "The Survival of the Unlike" for discussions of the philosophy of 

 plant-breeding and of the running out of varieties. 



PF (481) 



