ClIAP . i. Unconscious Selection. 27 



the increased size and beauty which we now see in the varieties of 

 the heartsease, rose, pelargonium, dahlia, and other plants, when 

 compared with the older varieties or with their parent-stocks. No 

 one would ever expect to get a first-rate hearsease or dahlia from 

 the seed of a wild plant. No one would expect to raise a first-rate 

 melting pear from the seed of the wild pear, though he might 

 succeed from a poor seedling growing wild, if it had come from a 

 garden-stock. The pear, though cultivated in classical times, 

 appears, from Pliny's description, to have been a fruit of very 

 inferior quality. I have seen great surprise expressed in horti- 

 cultural works at the wonderful skill of gardeners, in having pro- 

 duced such splendid results from such poor materials ; but the art 

 has been simple, and, as far as the final result is concerned, has 

 been followed almost unconsciously. It has consisted in always 

 cultivating the best known variety, sowing its seeds, and, when a 

 slightly better variety chanced to appear, selecting it, and so on- 

 wards. But the gardeners of the classical period, who cultivated 

 the best pears which they could procure, never thought what 

 splendid fruit we should eat ; though we owe our excellent fruit, 

 in some small degree, to their having naturally chosen and preserved 

 the best varieties they could anywhere find. 



A large amount of change, thus slowly and unconsciously ac- 

 cumulated, explains, as I believe, the well-known fact, that in a 

 number of cases we cannot recognise, and therefore do not know, 

 the wild parent-stocks of the plants which have been longest culti- 

 vated in our flower and kitchen gardens. If it has taken centuries 

 or thousands of years to improve or modify most of our plants up to 

 their present standard of usefulness to man, we can understand how 

 it is that neither Australia, the Cape of Good Hope, nor any other 

 region inhabited by quite uncivilised man, has afforded us a single 

 plant worth culture. It is not that these countries, so rich in species, 

 do not by a strange chance possess the aboriginal stocks of any use- 

 ful plants, but that the native plants have not been improved by 

 continued selection up to a standard of perfection comparable with 

 that acquired by the plants in countries anciently civilised. 



In regard to the domestic animals kept by uncivilised man, it 

 should not be overlooked that they almost always have to struggle 

 for their own food, at least during certain seasons. And in two 

 countries very differently circumstanced, individuals of the same 

 species, having slightly different constitutions or structure, would 

 often succeed better in the one country than in the other ; and thus 

 by a process of " natural selection," as will hereafter be more fully 

 explained, two sub-breeds might be formed. This, perhaps, partly 



