HEREDITY IN PLANTS. 71 



new varieties from localities different from their own in 

 soil and climatic conditions. Many fungus growths in 

 cultivated plants are superinduced by a weak physical 

 development, so that everything points to the advantage 

 of a change of stock if a cultivator wants to make either 

 a reputation in the community for good crops or a profit 

 on his product. 



The gardener cannot change the climate of a local- 

 ity, but he can transport plants from one end of the 

 earth to the other and, subjecting them to new condi- 

 tions of climate and soil, thus bringing about a variability 

 which, by selection and continued culture, can be per- 

 petuated, the new quality becoming hereditary. This 

 process of selection has given us our best types of vege- 

 tables and flowers. 



Man can do little to cause variability, but he can 

 seize upon good forms when they do appear, and, by 

 annual selection in fixed lines, secure important results. 

 No doubt the edible plants of the older forms have been 

 handed down from days of barbarism, when man was 

 forced, at times, by hunger to eat almost anything he 

 could swallow, but their qualities have been improved. 



At this day we can hardly believe that the wild 

 species of carrot, parsnip and cabbage were the progeni- 

 tors of our cultivated varieties. Several years ago the 

 wild carrot of the fields was experimented with at Blooms- 

 dale Farm, and, after seven years of high culture "and 

 careful selection, it had developed a root quite soft, juicy 

 and palatable. The writer has grown quite good-sized 

 and fairly edible tubers, after five years of cultivation, 

 from the wild potato of Mexico. 



The work of selection and the results of heredity is 

 in no plant so clearly shown as in the cabbage, every 

 one of the two hundred, or more, forms being developed 

 from one original, the wild plant of the sea coast .of 

 western Europe, now developed into plants of many dif- 



