PLANT-BREEDING 



CHAPTER I 

 THE FACT AND PHILOSOPHY OF VARIATION 



THERE is no one fact connected with agriculture that 

 more greatly interests all persons than the existence of 

 numerous varieties of plants that seem to satisfy every need 

 of the gardener. Whence came all this multitude of 

 forms? What are the methods employed in securing 

 them? Are they merely isolated facts or phenomena 

 of gardening, or have they some relation to the broader 

 phases of the evolution of the forms of life ? These .are 

 some of the questions that occur to every reflective 

 mind when it contemplates an attractive garden, but 

 they are questions that seem never to be answered. 

 Whatever attempt the gardener may make at answer- 

 ing them is either obscured by an effort to define what 

 a variety is, or else it consists in simply reciting how a 

 few given varieties came to be known. But there must 

 be some method of arriving at a conception of the ways 

 whereby the varieties of fruits and flowers and other culti- 

 vated plants have originated. If there is no such method, 

 then the origination of these varieties must follow no 

 law, and the discussion of the whole subject is fruitless. 

 But we have every confidence in the consecutive uniform- 

 B 1 



