Chap. XX. UNCONSCIOUS SELECTION. 201 



fruit, and vegetables which were then cultivated with some 

 excellent drawings made a hundred and fifty years previously, 

 was struck with surprise at the great improvement which had 

 been effected ; and remarks that these ancient flowers and 

 vegetables would now be rejected, not only by a florist but by 

 a village gardener. Since the time of Buffon the work of 

 improvement has steadily and rapidly gone on. Every florist 

 who compares our present flowers with those figured in books 

 published not long since, is astonished at the change. A well- 

 known amateur, 83 in speaking of the varieties of Pelargonium 

 raised by Mr. Garth only twenty-two years before, remarks, 

 " What a rage they excited : surely we had attained perfection, 

 " it was said; and now not one of the flowers of those days 

 " will be looked at. But none the less is the debt of gratitude 

 " which we owe to those who saw what was to be done, and 

 " did it." Mr. Paul, the well-known horticulturist, in writing 

 of the same flower, 84 says he remembers when young being 

 delighted with the portraits in Sweet's work ; " but what are 

 " they in point of beauty compared with the Pelargoniums of 

 " this day ? Here again nature did not advance by leaps ; 

 " the improvement was gradual, and if we had neglected 

 " those very gradual advances, we must have foregone the 

 " present grand results." How well this practical horti- 

 culturist appreciates and illustrates the gradual and accumu- 

 lative force of selection ! The Dahlia has advanced in beauty 

 in a like manner ; the line of improvement being guided by 

 fashion, and by the sucessive modifications which the flower 

 slowly underwent. 85 A steady and gradual change has been 

 noticed in many other flowers : thus an old florist, 86 after 

 describing the leading varieties of the Pink which were 

 grown in 1813, adds, " the pinks of those days would now be 

 " scarcely grown as border-flowers." The improvement of 

 so many flowers and the number of the varieties which have 

 been raised is all the more striking when we hear that the 



83 ' Journal of Horticulture,' 1862, Floricult. Soc, in ' Gardener's Chro- 

 p. 394. nicle,' 1843, p. 86. 



84 'Gardener's Chronicle,' 1857, 8e < Journal of Horticulture,' Oct. 

 p. 85. 24th, 18G5, p. 239. 



85 See Mr. Wildman's address to the 



