504 HIGHLY-CULTIVATED RACES ARE SAID TO 



It appears from evidence, the truth of which can scarcely be 

 questioned, that in some cases the most highly improved races 

 of cultivated plants suddenly revert to, or far towards, their 

 wild state when raised from seed. 



M. Chevreuil, in an ingenious essay on " Species," makes the 

 following statement : — " In North America, neither Pear-trees, 

 nor Apple-trees, nor Peach-trees exist in a wild state, belonging 

 to the species of our own contuient. The Europeans, in 

 settling there about three centuries since, carried thither the 

 seeds of these trees ; but instead of reproducing our cultivated 

 variety, they yielded at least in Virginia, in the first generation, 

 trees producing nothing hut wild frvAt, too austere to he eaten hy 

 people accustomed to our cultivated fruits. The seeds of the 

 American fruits of this first generation, produced trees whose 

 fruit was a little less bad than those of the preceding gene- 

 ration ; and finally, from generation to generation, there was a 

 perceptible improvement, but stiU of such a nature that the 

 fruits last produced are stUl inferior to our own ; and, what is 

 remarkable, those which have improved the most from seed 

 differ from the fruits of Europe ia taste and perfume. These 

 facts, which M. Poiteau collected in Virginia five-and-forty 

 years ago, prove the modifications produced by a succession of 

 generations of plants, the issue of a single seed, and at the 

 same time justify my definition of a species. And if it is said 

 that the seeds of the first fruit-trees sent to Virginia could not 

 have belonged to varieties possessing qualities of the same 

 excellence as the varieties now cultivated, nevertheless the fact 

 would remain that fruits gathered in Virginia were absolutely 

 different from those which their ancestors prod/uced at the same 

 time in Europe." 



Thatcher, in his American Orchardist, confirms this. He 

 says, that " a hundred seeds of the Golden Pippin will produce 

 large-leaved Apple-trees (the Golden Pippin itself has a small 

 leaf), bearing fruit of a considerable size ; but the tastes and 

 colours of each will be different, and none will be the same in 

 kind with the Pippin. Some will be sweet, some bitter, some 

 sour, some mawkish, some aromatic ; some yellow, others 

 green, red, or streaked." 



