558 THINGS NOT GENERALLY KNOWN. [September, 



THINGS NOT GENERALLY KNOWN. 



I think Mr. Hind has properly called your attention to the 

 notice inserted in the last June number of the ' Phytologist ' 

 under this title, and as he asks on what authority and by what 

 proofs sustained, the assertions in Specimens of Things not Generally 

 Known have been made, I beg to refer him and your readers to 

 the 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation/ pages 133 

 and 134 (reprint of sixth edition), from which the passage signed, 

 "from a Correspondent" is taken, and the writer of the ' Vestiges ' 

 refers for his authority to Darwin's ' Journal of a Voyage Round 

 the World,' Lamarck's * Philosophic de Zoologie,' and ' The 

 Gardeners' Chronicle, 1846,' page 118, it may be as well for 

 some of your readers to refer to these ' Vestiges,' and set the 

 question at rest. This work also contains other startling asser- 

 tions, such as (in continuation of the paragraph quoted) , — " It 

 appears that poorness of soil has the same eflPect as mowing 

 down. One observer states that, in a field of wheat near Lucerne, 

 he saw ears resembling barley, but with grain similar to rye, 

 growing from the same stem with ears of Avheat. Dr. Lindley, 

 who publishes these facts, acknowledges there being no theoretical 

 improbability in such transformation, seeing that in orchidaceous 

 plafits forms just as different as barley, rye, and oats, have been 

 proved by the most ingorous evidence to be accidental variations of 

 one common form, brought about no one knows how, but before our 

 eyes, and rendered permanent by equally mysterious agency. It 

 is more than probable that the greater number of what may be 

 called the domesticated plants are unsuspected variations of others 

 which, growing wild, are recognized as different species. One 

 noted instance of such transition has been detected within the 

 last few years in our different kinds of cabbage, — savoy, broccoli, 

 and cauliflower. They are all common descendants of a plant 

 growing wild on our sea-shores, the Brassica oleracea, a tran- 

 sition which no one can appreciate till he has compared the tough, 

 slender stem, and small, glaucous leaf of the original, with the 

 stout, fleshy stem, and large, succulent leaves, sometimes gathered 

 into a heart of several feet in circumference, which he will find 

 in the most familiar of the cabbages." The author of the 

 ' Vestiges ' then asks : " Apart from all theorizing about the ab- 

 solute character of species, do not these facts show a transibihty 



