io SELECTION BY MAN. Ca.vr. 1, 



lie studies his subject for years, and devotes his lifetime to it 

 witli indomitable ])erscverance, he "sviU succeed, and may make 

 great improvements ; if he wants any of these qualities, he aa'III 

 assuredly fail. Few -would readily believe in the natural ca- 

 pacity and years of practice requisite to become even a skilful 

 pigeon-fancier. 



The same principles are followed by horticulturists ; but the 

 variations are here often more abrupt. No one supposes that 

 our choicest productions have been produced by a single vari- 

 ation from the aboriginal stock. "W^e have proofs that this is 

 not so in some cases in Avhich exact records have been kept : 

 thus, to give a very trifling instance, the steadily-increasing 

 size of the common gooseberry may be quoted. We see an 

 astonishing improvement in many florists' flowers, when the 

 flowei'S of the present day are compared with drawings made 

 only twenty or thirty years ago. When a race of plants is 

 once pretty Avell established, the seed-raisers do not pick out 

 the best plants, but merely go over their seed-beds, and pull 

 up the " rogues," as they call the plants that deviate from the 

 ]iroper standard. With animals this kind of selection is, in 

 fact, also followed ; for hardly any one is so careless as to 

 allow his Avorst animals to breed. 



In regard to plants, there is another means of observing the 

 accmnulated effects of selection — namely, by comparing the 

 diversity of flowers in the different varieties of the same species 

 in the flower-garden ; the diversity of leaves, pods, or tubers, 

 or whatever part is valued, in the kitchen-garden, in compari- 

 son with the flowers of the same varieties ; and the diversity 

 of fruit of the same species in the orchard, in comparison with 

 the leaves and flowers of the same set of varieties. See how 

 different the leaves of the cabbage are, and how extremely 

 alike the flowers ; how unlike the flowers of the heart's-ease 

 are, and how alike the leaves ; how much the fruit of the dif- 

 ferent kinds of gooseberries differ in size, color, shape, and 

 hairiness, and yet the flowers present very slight differences. 

 It is not that tlie varieties which differ largely in some one 

 point do not differ at all in other points ; this is hardly ever — 

 I speak after careful observation — perhaps never, the case. 

 Tlie law of correlated variation, the importance of which should 

 never be overlooked, will insure some diflerences ; but, as a 

 general rule, I cannot doul)t that the continued selection of 

 slight v:iriations, either in the leaves, the flowers, or the fruit, 

 will produce races dillering from each other chiefly in these 

 characters. 



