• CHAPTER IV. 

 Races and Types of Sugar Beets. 



Preliminary Remarks. — The races and types of 

 people are so characteristic, that seeing one of them in 

 a foreign clime, it is possible to declare to what part of 

 the world he belongs, and even after a long sojourn in 

 any environment and intermarriage, or whatever com- 

 bination is made, the characteristic of the race is trans- 

 mitted to the progeny through several generations. 

 What is true of man and animals is also true of beets 

 in every particular. Even when taken from the mother 

 country and planted in an entirely different soil, imder 

 different conditions, the persistency of the type 

 remains, with slight variations; after a time, however, 

 through neglect, it disappears. 



It would hardly be possible to give a single exam- 

 ple of any vegetable or organic structure, in which this 

 principle does not prevail. Just how the races and 

 types originated in nature has never been satisfactorily 

 determined; one fact is certain, however: Man has it 

 within his power to create types, or even races, entirely 

 different to those previously existing. An important 

 example to the point is the bi-annual domesticated 

 sugar beet, as compared with the wild annual root. 

 There is an important difference between that which 

 man accomplishes and those processes of evolution 

 worked out by nature's law. The one starts from a 

 form already existing, and the other is the gradual 

 change from a protoplastic condition to a perfect race. 



Darwin partly declares that there is one and only 

 one method of ameliorating, and that is, not by cross- 

 ing races, but by a constant effort to improve the race 



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