ON EXTREME VARIATION 



cisely alike. Among them you could discover 

 resemblances to all the other dahlias in your gar- 

 den and, indeed, to a large proportion of those 

 that you had seen pictured in the seed catalogues. 



In a word, your dahlia seeds show that they 

 contain the racial strains of a great variety of an- 

 cestors, and they present a variation that is truly 

 disconcerting to the gardener whose sole desire 

 was to produce a lot of dahlias of uniform char- 

 acter. 



In one case, recorded by Darwin, an experi- 

 menter listed no fewer than eighteen different 

 varieties of the dahlia grown in the first genera- 

 tion from the seed of a single plant, and of course 

 there were all manner of intermediate forms. In 

 the listed eighteen only six corresponded pretty 

 closely to certain named or catalogued varieties. 

 It would perhaps more truly present the record if 

 we were to say that there were not eighteen dif- 

 ferent varieties merely, but as many varieties as 

 there were individual plants. 



But while such an experience as this is utterly 

 disconcerting to any amateur whose only thought 

 is to produce a bed of flowers of uniform color or 

 character, the same experience would offer pre- 

 cisely the opportunity that the would-be developer 

 of new varieties is seeking. Now it is not a case 

 of hunting here and there throughout a company 



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