Chap. XIII. REVERSION. 5 



the false plants or " rogues " as they are called. It has 

 already been remarked, that some few seedling apples and 

 pears generally resemble, but apparently are not identical 

 with, the wild trees from which they are descended. In our 

 turnip s and carrot-beds a few plants often " break " — that is', 

 flower too soon ; and their roots are generally hard and 

 stringy, as in the parent-species. By the aid of a little 

 selection, carried on during a few generations, most of our 

 cultivated plants could probably be brought back, without 

 any great change in their conditions of life, to a wild or 

 nearly wild condition : Mr. Buckman has effected this with 

 the parsnip ; 9 and Mr. Hewett C. Watson, as he informs me, 

 selected, during three generations, " the most diverging 

 plants of Scotch kail, perhaps one of the least modified 

 varieties of the cabbage ; and in the third generation some 

 of the plants came very close to the forms now established in 

 England about old castle-walls, and called indigenous." 



Reversion in Animals and Plants which have run ivild. — In 

 the cases hitherto considered, the reverting animals and 

 plants have not been exposed to any great or abrupt change 

 in their conditions of life which could have induced this 

 tendency ; but it is very different with animals and plants 

 which have become feral or run wild. It has been repeatedly 

 asserted in the most positive manner by various authors, that 

 feral animals and plants invariably return to their primitive 

 specific type. It is curious on what little evidence this belief 

 rests. Many of our domesticated animals could not subsist 

 in a wild state ; thus, the more highly improved breeds of 

 the pigeon will not " field " or search for their own food. 

 Sheep have never become feral, and would be destroyed by 

 almost every beast of prey. 10 In several cases we do not 

 know the aboriginal parent-species, and cannot possibly tell 



8 ' Gardener's Chron.,' 1855, p. found that they are not able to es- 

 777. tablish themselves ; they generally 



9 Ibid., 1862, p. 721. perish from the frozen snow clinging 



10 Mr. Boner speaks (' Chamois- to their wool, and they have lost the 

 hunting,' 2nd edit., 1860, p. 92) of skill necessary to pass over steep icy 

 sheep often running wild in the slopes. On one occasion two ewes 

 Bavarian Alps ; but, on making survived the winter, but their lamb-. 

 further inquiries at my request, he perished. 



