Miscellaneous. 



52 



[July, 1908. 



under natural conditions, and the very points 

 which constitute this handicap are those 

 in which their utility to mankind is chiefly 

 exhibited. Still more notable is the example 

 afforded by the different breeds of pigeons — 

 fantails, pouters, carriers, tumblers and 

 the rest — a score of forms could be named 

 which, if submitted to a maker of bird 

 species ignorant of their origin, and know- 

 ing nothing of their capacity for inter- 

 breeding, would be separately catalogued — 

 many of them as generic-ally distinct. 



There can be no doubt as to the reason why 

 plants of such different types survive in 

 natural conditions and under cultivation 

 respectively. Many of those features of 

 cultivated plants which render them most 

 useful to mankind are such as would effec- 

 tually prevent the survival of these plants 

 in a state of undisturbed competition with 

 the weeds which cultivation removes. This 

 ousting of competitors is one of the first and 

 most important functions of cultivation , and 

 it enables delicate and monstrous plants to 

 survive which could not otherwise do so. 

 Many other advantages are enjoyed by culti- 

 vated plants. Their lot is made easy by 

 tillage of the soil and by the addition of 

 nutritive substances. Besides the exclusion 

 of competitors, insect and fungus diseases are 

 kept in check by artificial means, and other 

 animal enemies are warned away. In times 

 of drought water is supplied, and protection 

 may be given from excessive wind or cold 

 or sunshine. 



The condition imposed upon the plant in 

 return for all these advantages is that it 

 should exhibit some feature which may be 

 looked upon by human beings as either useful 

 or ornamental, or even curious or uncommon. 

 Under natural conditions rigorous competi- 

 tions prevents the plant from indulging in 

 any extensive display of characters which 

 are not distinctly useful from the point of 

 view of the plant's own progress in life. 

 There is no good reason, however, for suppos- 

 ing that deviations from the ordinary type, in 

 the form of sports and monstrosities, are 

 any less abundant in nature than they are 

 under cultivation where such novelties are 

 known to appear very frequently. But 

 these forms are usually weaker than the 

 normal type and quite unable to survive in 

 competition with it, whereas under care- 

 ful cultivation every seed sown has usually 

 plenty of space to develop, and the new form 

 will moreover have even a better chance of 

 survival than the type, if it happens to 

 attract favourable attention. It will then be 

 selected and may form the starting point of 

 a new race or variety, which will survive 

 because of its usefulness to man even though 

 from the plant's own point of view its 

 distinguishing characters may be highly dis- 

 advantageous ones. 



The continued existence of the more highly 

 modified garden plants is entirely dependent 

 upon the constant care and attention of the 

 gardener. This is clearly shown by the 

 result of relaxing that care, and still more 

 conclusively by removing the gardener's 

 attention altogether. In a garden which is 

 allowed to run wild all the finer varieties 

 disappear first. If the garden contained rare 

 varieties of carnations, for example, a time 

 will soon arrive when only the old fashion- 

 ed red form of carnation will survive ; among 

 poppies the purple type will maintain its 

 existence longest — instances not of reversion 

 to an ancestral type, but of the survival of 

 the fittest. Later on these last survivors 

 are themselves exterminated and the weeds 

 are left triumphant. Even the ordinary 

 garden weeds, many of which are undesir- 

 able aliens introduced long ago with seed 

 or in other accidental ways, are dependent 

 for their livelihood on the conditions of 

 cultivation. The weeds of cultivation are 

 unable to maintain their position against the 

 inroads of the natural Avild plants, so that 

 still further changes take place in the erst- 

 while garden before a condition of equili- 

 brium is finally arrived at — a permanent 

 state in which cultivated and artificial are 

 entirely replaced by wild and natural. 



In a sense, then, and speaking in general 

 terms, cultivated plants are artificial or un- 

 natural productions, inasmuch as they 

 cannot survive under natural conditions, 

 but owe their very means of existence to 

 the artifice of man. But they are not arti- 

 ficial in every sense of the word, for their 

 origin may be, and usually is, a natural 

 process. Experiments have indeed recently 

 been made with a view to producing sport s by 

 injecting different chemical substances into 

 the reproductive organs, and some measure 

 of success has even attended these attempts; 

 but, whatever may be the future results of 

 this method, no useful strain has so far 

 been produced by it. Man does not, 

 strictly speaking, create new forms of 

 plants, although the enthusisatic breeder 

 may be pardoned for speaking figuratively of 

 some novelty as repi'esenting his own handi- 

 work. The function of selection, at any 

 rate, is to preserve, not to originate; the 

 new forms which are selected are given us 

 by Nature. 



In the case of plants of hybrid origin the 

 gardener has considerable justification in 

 describing the novelty which he produces as 

 a creation, a truly artificial product of his 

 own special craft. The combinations pro- 

 duced in this way are often such as would 

 never arise naturally. The parent species 

 may have been brought from widely separat- 

 ed regions and may be naturally incapable 

 of surviving within range of one another. 

 "Very frequently the unnatural mating can 



