318 The American Naturalist. | [April, 
EXPERIMENTAL EVOLUTION AMONGST PLANTS! 
By L. H. Barrry. 
De Varigny has written a most suggestive book upon Ex- 
perimental Evolution, in which he contends for the establish- 
ment of an institution where experiments can be definitely un- 
dertaken for the purpose of transforming a species into a new 
species. “In experimental transformism,” he writes, “ lies the 
only test which we can apply to the evolutionary theory. We 
must use all the methods we are acquainted with, and also 
those, yet unknown, which cannot fail to disclose themselves 
when we begin a thorough investigation of the matter, and do 
our utmost to bring about the transmutation of any species. 
We do not specially desire to transform any one species into 
another known at present ; we wish to transform it into a new 
species. . . . Experimental transformism is what we need 
now, and therein lies the only method we can use.” 
This is a most commendable object, and I hope that the at- 
tempt will be made to create a new species before our very 
eyes. This is what most people demand as a proof of evolu- 
tion, and they are sometimes impatient that it has not been 
done; and it would seem, upon the face of it, that nothing 
more could be desired. When I reflect, however, upon the 
fact that this very thing has occurred time and again with 
the horticulturist, and consider that botanists and philoso- 
phers persist in refusing to see it, I am constrained to offer 
some suggestions upon De Varigny’s excellent ambition. If 
I show a botanist a horticultural type of recent or even con- 
temporaneous origin which I consider to be specifically dis- 
tinct from its ancestors, he at once exclaims that is not a spe- 
cies but a horticultural variety. If I ask him why, he re- 
plies, “ Because it is an artificial production!” If Ishow him 
that the type is just as distinct from the species from which it 
1Abstract of an address before the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, Boston, 
Feb. 23, 1895. 
