576 REPORT—1904. 
Let us illustrate the consequences. Princess of Wales is a large modern violet, 
single, with stalks a foot long or more. Marie Louise is another, with large 
double flowers, pale colour, short stalks, peculiar scent, leaf, &c. We call these 
‘ varieties,’ and we speak of the various fixed differences between these two, and 
between them and wild odorata, as due to variation ; and, again, the transient differ- 
ences between the same odorata in poor, dry soil, or in a rich hedge-bank, we call 
variation, using but the one term for differences, quantitative or qualitative, 
permanent or transitory, in size, number of parts, chemistry, and the rest. We 
might as well use one term to denote the differences between a bar of silver, a 
stick of lunar caustic, a shilling, or a teaspoon. No wonder that the ignorant tell 
us they can find no order in variation. 
This prodigious confusion, which has spread obscurity over every part of these 
inquiries, is traceable to the original misconception of the nature of specific differ- 
ence, as a thing imposed and not inherent. From this, at least, the earlier 
experimenters were free ; and the undertakings of Girtner and his contemporaries 
were informed by the true conception that the properties and behaviour of species 
were themselves specific. Free from the later fancy that but for selection the 
forms of animals and plants would be continuous and indeterminate, they recog- 
nised the definiteness of species and variety, and boldly set themselves to work out, 
case by case, the manifestations and consequences of that definiteness. 
Over this work of minute and largely experimental analysis, rapidly growing, 
the new doctrine that organisms are mere conglomerates of adaptative devices 
descended like a numbing spell. By an easy confusion of thought, faith in the 
physiological definiteness of species and variety passed under the common ban, 
which had at last exorcised the demon Immutability. Henceforth no naturalist 
must hold communion with either, on pain of condemnation as an apostate, a 
danger to the dynasty of Selection. From this oppression we in England, at least, 
are scarcely beginning to emerge. Bentham’s‘ Flora,’ teaching very positively that 
the primrose, the cowslip, and the oxlip are impermanent varieties of one 
species, is in the hand of every beginner, while the British Museum Reading Room 
finds.it unnecessary to procure Gartner's ‘ Bastarderzeugung.’ 
And so this mass of specific learning has passed out of account. The evidence 
of tlie collector, the horticulturist, the breeder, the fancier, has been treated with 
neglect, and sometimes, I fear, with contempt. That wide field whence Darwin 
drew his wonderful store of facts has been some forty years untouched. Speak 
to professional zoologists of any breeder’s matter, and how many will not intimate 
to you politely that fanciers are unscientific persons, and their concerns beneath 
notice? For the concrete in evolution we are offered the abstract. Our philo- 
sophers debate with great fluency whether between imaginary races sterility could 
grow up by an imaginary Selection ; whether Selection working upon hypothetical 
materials could produce sexual differentiation ; how under a system of Natural 
Selection bodily symmetry may have been impressed on formless protoplasm—that 
monstrous figment of the mind, fit starting-point for such discussions. But by a 
physiological irony enthusiasm for these topics is sometimes fully correlated with 
indifference even to the classical illustrations; and for many whose minds are 
attracted by the abstract problem of inter-racial sterility there are few who can 
name for certain ten cases in which it has been already observed. 
And yet in the natural world, in the collecting-box, the seed-bed, the poultry- 
yard, the places where variation, heredity, selection may be seen in operation and 
their properties tested, answers to these questions meet us at every turn—frag- 
mentary answers, it is true, but each direct to the point. For if any one will stoop 
to examine Nature in those humble places, will do a few days’ weeding, prick 
out some rows of cabbages, feed up a few score of any variable larva, he will not 
wait long before he learns the truth about variation. If he go further and breed 
two or three generations of almost any controllable form, he will obtain imme- 
diately facts as to the course of heredity which obviate the need for much 
laborious imagining. If strictly trained, with faith in the omnipotence of 
selection, he will not proceed far before he encounters disquieting facts, Upon 
