154 Scientific Intelligence. 



To this proposition we accede, so far as respects the direct - 

 conseqiieiice of crossing. To fill up the interval more or less 

 between two forms or species with intermediate patterns may 

 tend to the fusion or confusion of the two, but not to the orioi na- 

 tion of new forms or species. Although Naudin's own expei-iments 

 lead him to deny all tendency to variation overpassing these limits, 

 we do not forget that his countryman, the late M. Vilmorin,— 

 working in a different way and with another object, — arrived at a 

 different conclusion. He succeeded, as we understand, in origin- 

 novelties fn.rn species which refused to vary 



per se, by making a cross,— not to infuse the character of the t 

 parent, for he fertilized the progeny with the pollen of the ftr 

 parent, and thus early bred out the other blood, but to induce 



►vhich, once initiated in the internal disorder consequent 

 upon the crossing, was apt to proceed, or might be led on by se- 

 lection, to great lengths, according to Vilmorin. The variations in 

 question, being mainly such as are sought in floriculture, may not 

 have passed the line laid down by Naudin, or actually have intro- 

 duced new features. But such plants would surely'have no ex- 

 emption from the ordinary liability to variation. If other plants 

 vary, in the sense of producing something new, so may these. 



This brings us to another inference which Naudin draws. Hav- 

 ing observed that his hybrids in their manifold variation exhibited 

 nothing which was not derivable from their immediate ancestry, 

 he directly (and in our opinion too confidently) concludes that all 

 variation is atavism, — that when real variations are set up in ordi- 

 nary species, this is not an origination but a reversion, a breaking 

 out of some old ancestral character, a particular and long deferred 

 instance of this variation desordonnie, which would thus appear 

 to be the only kind of variation. This view has been presented 

 before, but not, perhaps, so broadly. Adducing some theoretical 

 considerations in its favor— to which we may revert— and some 

 sound reasons against the view that variation is caused by external 

 influences, he declares it " infinitely more probable that variation of 

 species properly so called is due to ancestral influences rather than 

 to accidental actions." We might think so if these two categories 

 wen- (Exhaustive, and external conditions must be supposed to act 

 iminediately, as the cause rather than the occasion of variation. 

 But tlie supposition that "accidental actions," whatever they may 

 be, and external influences of every sort do not produce but 'educe 

 and conduct variation — which is our idea of what natural selection 

 means— avoids the force of Naudin's arguments. 



Moreover Naudin's view, regarded as an hypothesis for explain- 

 ing variation, leaves the problem just where it finds it. To ex- 

 plain the occurrence of present and actual variations, hypothetical 

 ones like those of a former time are assumed; the present diversity 

 implies not only equal but the very same anterior diversity, and so 

 on backwards. Or rather it demands a much greater diversity at 

 the outset than now ; for these aberrant forms are the rare exception, 

 anrl if due to atavism they imply the loss of the many and the inci- 



