24 METHODICAL SELECTION. [Chap. I. 



very trifling instance, the steadily-increasing size of the common 

 gooseberry may be quoted. We see an astonishing improvement in 

 many florists' flowers, when the flowers of the present day are com- 

 pared with drawings made only twenty or thirty years ago. When 

 a race of plants is once pretty well established, the seed-raisers do 

 not pick out the best plants, but merely go over their seed-beds, 

 and pull up the "rogues," as they call the plants that deviate 

 from the proper standard. With animals this kind of selection is, 

 in fact, likewise followed ; for hardly any one is so careless as to 

 breed from his worst animals. 



In regard to plants, there is another means of observing the 

 accumulated effects of selection — namely, by comparing the diver- 

 sity of flowers in the different varieties of the same species in the 

 flower-garden ; the diversity of leaves, pods, or tubers, or whatever 

 part is valued, in the kitchen-garden, in comparison with the 

 flowers of the same varieties ; and the diversity of fruit of the same 

 species in the orchard, in comparison with the leaves and flowers 

 of the same set of varieties. See how different the leaves of the 

 cabbage are, and how extremely alike the flowers ; how unlike the 

 flowers of the heartsease are, and how alike the leaves ; how much 

 the fruit of the different kinds of gooseberries differ in size, colour, 

 shape, and hairiness, and yet the flowers present very slight diffe- 

 rences. It is not that the varieties which differ largely in some one 

 point do not differ at all in other points ; this is hardly ever, — I 

 speak after careful observation, — perhaps never, the case. The law 

 of correlated variation, the importance of which should never be 

 overlooked, will ensure some differences ; but, as a general rule, it 

 cannot be doubted that the continued selection of slight variations, 

 either in the leaves, the flowers, or the fruit, will produce races dif- 

 fering from each other chiefly in these characters. 



It may be objected that the principle of selection has been 

 reduced to methodical practice for scarcely more than three-quarters 

 of a century ; it has certainly been more attended to of late years, 

 and many treatises have been published on the subject ; and the 

 result has been, in a corresponding degree, rapid and important. 

 But it is very far from true that the principle is a modern discovery. 

 I could give several references to works of high antiquity, in which 

 the full importance of the principle is acknowledged. In rude and 

 barbarous periods of English history choice animals were cften im- 

 ported, and laws were passed to prevent their exportation: the 

 destruction of horses under a certain size was ordered, and this may 

 be compared to the " roguing " of plants by nurserymen. The prin- 

 ciple of selection I find distinctly given in an ancient Chinese ency • 



