﻿124 Darwin, and after Darwin. 



and sowed one lot in the light dry soil near the 

 Museum of Natural History in Paris, while another 

 lot was sown by him at the same time in heavy 

 soil elsewhere. His object was to ascertain whether 

 he could produce a good cultivated radish by 

 methodical selection ; and this he did, in a wonder- 

 fully rapid manner, during the course of a very few 

 generations. But the point for us is, that from the 

 first the plants grown in the light soil of Paris 

 presented sundry marked differences from those 

 grown in the heavy soil of the country ; and that 

 these points of difference had nothing to do with 

 the variations on which his artificial selection was 

 brought to bear. For while his artificial selection 

 was directed to increasing the size of the "root," 

 the differences in question had reference to its form 

 and colour. In Paris an elongated form prevailed, 

 which presented either a white or a rose colour : in 

 the country the form was more rounded, and the 

 colour violet, dark brown, or " almost black." Now, 

 as these differences were strongly apparent in the 

 first generation, and were not afterwards made the 

 subject of selection, both in origin and development 

 they must have been due to " climatic " influences 

 acting on the somatic tissues. And although the author 

 does not appear to have tested their hereditary char- 

 acters by afterwards sowing the seed from the Paris 

 variety in the country, or vice versa, we may 

 fairly conclude that these changes must have been 

 hereditary — ist, from the fact of their intensification 

 in the course of the five sequent generations over 

 which the experiment extended, and, 2nd, from the 

 very analogous results which were similarly obtained 



