236 EXPERIMENTAL EVOLUTION LECT. 



Disuse, where they will see what has been done and 

 what may be attempted. Care should be taken to 

 operate preferably on useless characters. But are 

 there any useless characters ? 



It is a rather curious fact that while the operation of 

 selection is recognised by most evolutionists, even if 

 holding Lamarckian versus Darwinian views, but few 

 experiments, as such, have been yet performed, 

 although observations are plentiful. Among the best 

 which have yet been made, I must refer to those 

 of Vilmorin, 1 performed many years ago, and 

 published for the first time in the Transactions oj 

 the Horticultural Society in 1840 (2nd Series, vol. ii., 

 p. 348). M. de Vilmorin, considering that most of 

 our food-vegetables are derived from species which 

 have been altered by man, and that the most interest- 

 ing point to investigate is the methods through which 

 the alteration has been obtained, notices the fact 

 familiar to all, that while species which have been 

 a long time under cultivation vary easily and in many 

 directions, those which have been less cultivated, or 

 have not been cultivated at all hardly exhibit an)' 

 variation. Such has been the case with this writer 

 in his experiments on Lactuca perennis, on Tetragonia, 

 on Solanum stoloniferum, on Brassica orientalis. But 



1 See his Notice sur f Amelioration de la Carolte Salvage in Notices 

 sur t Amelioration des Plant es par la Cuttitre, Paris, 1886. 



