1895.] Experimental Evolution Amongst Plants. 321 
botanical characters as well marked as similar accepted spe- 
cies have, and these characters must show, as a whole, a gen- 
eral tendency towards permanency when the plant is normally 
propagated by seeds. He must measure his type by the rule 
of accepted botanical practice. Ifthe same plant were found 
wild, so that all prejudice might be removed, would the bot- 
anist unhesitatingly describe it asa new species? If yes, then 
we should say that a new species had been created under the 
hand of man; and this rule I wish now to apply to a very few 
familiar plants. In doing so, I do not wish to be understood 
as saying that I consider it advisable to describe these plants 
as species under the existing methods of botanical description 
and nomenclature, for, merely as a matter of convenience and 
perspicuity, I do not; but I wish to show that they really are, 
in every essential character, just as much species as very many 
other universally accepted species are. 
[The speaker then produced numerous instances of the evo- 
lution of forms of garden plants, in various genera, which are 
as distinct from their parents and from each other as accepted 
species of the same genus are; and these forms are as perman- 
ent, when multiplied extensively through many years by 
means of the seeds, as these wild species are. “Here we have 
absolutely new and unique types, as De Varigny demands, 
and they are as distinct from each other and from their 
parents, in accepted botanical characters, as ‘ good species’ in 
the same genus are from each other, and they perpetuate these 
characters as unequivocally as those species do. Moreover, 
we know definitely what their origins were, and they therefore 
answer all the purposes of experimental evolution. 
“ All this is but another illustration of how tenaciously bot- 
anists still hold to the Linneean idea of species, whilst they 
profess the Darwinian idea.’ 
I have now brought to your attention a few familiar plants 
for the purpose of showing that what are, to all intents and 
purposes, good species have originated in recent years; and 
that, whilst botanists demand that the origination of species 
within historic times shall constitute the only indisputable 
proof of organic evolution, they nevertheless refuse to accept 
