The Choice and Fixation of Variations 39 



best of them are usually measured by a score of years or 

 less. They run out or pass out by variation, into other 

 forms. The Trophy tomato is not the Trophy tomato 

 which was introduced over forty years ago, although it bears 

 the old name and is a direct descendant of the first stock. 



Bud selection. In plants multiplied by buds that is, 

 by budding, grafting, cuttings, tubers, and the like 

 there is less variation in the offspring than in those prop- 

 agated by seeds. Yet we have seen that no two Baldwin 

 apple trees all of which are but divisions, more or less 

 remote, of the same original tree are alike, and now 

 and then one branch of a fruit tree may " sport " or develop 

 a strange bud-variety. We know, also, that the same 

 variety of fruit tree takes on different characters in 

 different geographical regions, so that the Greening apple 

 is no longer the Greening of Rhode Island in the West 

 and South. So, it is apparent that even when we divide 

 a plant into many parts and distribute the members far 

 and wide, and when there is no occasion for concerning 

 ourselves with fixing the type, even here there is 

 variation. In some cases, particularly in those in which 

 we multiply the plant by dividing abnormally developed 

 parts, there is a tendency to scatter or to vary in many 

 directions, and also a tendency to run out by degeneration. 

 This is admirably true of the potato, varieties of which, 

 in ten years or less, become so mixed in their characters, 

 through rapid variation and deterioration, that we must 

 return to seedling productions for a new start. 



Variation and selection not entirely within man's con- 

 trol. Man is only rarely the direct means of originating 

 variations. He finds them among the normal plants of 



