1395.] Experimental Evolution Amongst Plants. 319 
sprung as that species is from its related species, and that it 
reproduces its kind with just as much certainty, he still replies 
that, because it is a horticultural production it cannot be a 
species. In what, then, does an accidental horticultural origin 
differ from any other origin? Simply in the fact that one takes 
place under the eye of man and the other occurs somewhere 
else! It isimpossible at the present day to make a definition 
of a species which shall exclude many horticultural types, un- 
less an arbitrary exception is made of them. The old defini- 
tions assumed that species are special creative acts, and the 
method of origin is therefore stated or implied in all of them. 
The definition itself, therefore, was essentially a statement of the 
impossibility of evolution. We have now revised our defini- 
tions so as to exclude the matter of origin, and thereby allow 
free course to evolution studies; and yet here is a great class 
of natural objects which is practically eliminated from our 
consideration because, unhappily, we know whence the forms 
came! Or, to state the case differently, these types cannot be 
accepted as proofs of the transformation of species because we 
know certainly that they are the result of transformation ! 
Now, just this state of things would be sure to occur if De 
Varigny were to transform one species into another. People 
would say that the new form is not really a species, because it 
is the result of cultivation, domestication and definite breed- 
ing by man. He could never hope to secure more remarkable 
transformations than have occurred a thousand times in the 
garden; and his scheme—so far as it applies to plants—is es- 
sentially that followed by all good gardeners. Or, if the preju- 
dices of critics respecting the so-called artificial production 
of species could be overcome, he could just as well draw his 
proofs of evolution from what has already been done with cul- 
tivated plants and domesticated animals, as from similar re- 
sults which might arise in the future from his independent ef- 
forts. Iam'not arguing against the scheme to create a species 
before our eyes, but I am simply stating what has been and is 
the insurmountable difficulty in just this line of endeavor— 
the inability of the experimentor to satisfy some scientific men 
that he has really produced a species; for it is a singular thing 
