APPENDIX. 
I. HOW DID THE VARIETIES OF FRUITS 
ORIGINATE ? 
There is universal curiosity to know how the various kinds of 
fruits have originated. It seems to be next to impossible to en- 
lighten the public mind upon the question, for whatever detailed ex- 
planation one may give seems to leave the questioner unsatisfied. 
The real cause of this dissatisfaction is the fact that people assume 
that there is something mysterious about the process of the origi- 
nation of varieties; and so long as the mind makes a mystery of 
a subject it is impossible to elucidate it. We have also been 
taught that like normally produces like, and therefore that any 
unlikeness between two plants—as between the parent and its off- 
spring—calls for instant explanation. The fact is, that it is not 
the nature of domestic productions for like to produce like, but 
rather for similar to produce similar. That is, there are certain 
type or family characteristics which pass over to the offspring, but 
there is normally almost endless unlikenesses in the details. Apples 
give rise to apples, and sometimes there is a closer reproduction 
of the parents in tribes like the Fameuse apples and the Crawford 
peaches; but there is seldom or never an exact duplication of pa- 
rental features. Considering that this is the normal law of nature, 
it follows that the wonder is that plants should ever reproduce the 
variety with approximate exactness. In other’ words, rigidity of 
generation may be the thing to be explained rather than the elas- 
ticity of it. In kitchen-gardeu vegetables this rigidity has come about, 
but it is the direct result of a long effort at selection and breed- 
ing until the elasticity of the type has been largely bred out.* 
*A fuller explanation of this class of facts will be found on pages 88, 
89 and 90 of “Plant-Breeding;” and the reader is referred to that work 
and to “The Survival of the Unlike” for diseussions of the philosophy of 
plant-breeding and of the running out of varieties. 
FF (481) 
