294 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
while a specific connection of these with the ruta-baga seems uncertain. It is 
only as these forms are produced through the sowing of the seed of Brassica 
Oleracea that their close connection becomes manifested. 
In the case of some long cultivated plants the original prototype is unknown, 
and can be sought but by conjecture. Such is the case with many of our cereals, 
with lettuce, etc. 
In some plants selection has been exerted in different directions, as, for 
illustration, with the beet, whereby the root-beet and the leaf-beet have been 
produced; the celery and the celeriac; the parsley and the Hamburg parsley, the 
onion and the top-onion, etc. 
It is clearly evident that conscious selection is a powerful agency for the 
changing of form, and by long exercise can overcome the form or type affixed by 
nature to a species. The direction of this change and its consequences are 
determined by man in the direction toward usefulness to him as distinct from 
nature's intent toward the maintenance of the species. 
We hence have a different set of motives governing the domesticated plant 
than those which govern the feral plant. The individuals of a natural species 
cluster about a common type, held in place by a natural environment, reacting with 
the force transmitted by heredity. The individuals of an artificial (domesticated 
variety) cluster about a common type formed and continued through man's 
a'^ency, whereby an assisted environment reacts upon heredity modified by selec- 
tion in influencing plant form, and in the feral plant, genetic resemblance, as 
observed or inferred, furnishes a method of classification in accord with the law 
of evolution as expressing harmonies of action of special causes. Through the 
reaction of natural heredity with natural environment, classes are already formed 
for us and but await our discovery. 
In the domesticated plant, the power of intelligence to eliminate, modify 
and direct the action of natural laws under a given purpose, introduces a new 
factor to influence plant growth, and forms designed for uses most genetic, producing 
resemblances in those portions of the plant where change means value to man. In 
accordance with the law of evolution, but under a new application, form becomes 
paramount as a motive over genesis ; usefulness, freed from the motive of self- 
maintenance, becomes paramount over the motive of continuance of the species. 
Through the reaction of an assisted heredity with the artificial environment, includ- 
ing conscious selection in artificial plants, classes are already formed for us, and 
but await our discovery. If in nature, classes are formed through genetic data as 
paramount, then the natural system is in force for classification. If, under art, 
classes are formed through human selection based upon form as paramount, then 
an artificial system of classification is as truly scientific, and expresses, in like man- 
ner, as true a set of relations, but relations of a different character, as does the 
natural system. In a scientific artificial arrangement we seize upon a quality or 
qualities which yield us information as to the motive or development for uses, and 
furnish signs of natural laws as modified and influenced by man, and form of select- 
ed parts furnish the key ; in a scientific natural arrangement we seize upon a quaHty 
