ON TIMBER. 309 



inferior oak, and that there are those mercantile 

 considerations in favour of their use, that is no 

 justification of the breeder or the planter of the 

 oak. An acorn is not an oak; there is merely 

 that in it which will, in time, make an oak out of 

 other materials if it is put properly in the way of 

 so doing. Nor is there any reason that an acorn 

 should not be made to produce a better oak, than 

 the one upon which it grew. " Improving the 

 breed," is constantly done by those who rear do- 

 mestic animals, and has been done in the case 

 of cultivated plants, more especially those that 

 are used as human food, from the beginning of his- 

 tory, and before it, for we meet with the names 

 of those cultivated plants which have separate 

 types in a wild state, in the most ancient histo- 

 ries ; and those plants must have been cultivated 

 out of something. The most learned botanists of 

 the present day cannot be absolutely certain about 

 the original potato ; various species or varieties 

 of the cabbage tribe are sufficient to puzzle a 

 novice; and after a while the wild plants from 

 which we have bred the Camellia Japonica and the 

 Dahlia, will not be a matter to be settled at a 

 glance. It is not very long since the wild roses 

 of Scotland were bred double and so deep-co- 

 loured as some of them are ; and yet, to people that 

 have some little knowledge of plants, their rela- 

 tions to the ones still wild are, even now, fully 

 more matters of testimony than of ocular proof. 



Now, if people have been able to cultivate ani- 

 mals into greater size and strength and beauty, 

 and also to make them have better flesh and finer 

 wool ; if they have been able to improve by cul- 

 ture the beauty of flowers, and the nourishing 



