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its natural state, is absolutely nothing. It is scarce long enough to 

 develop, much less to fix, any trifling natural variation from the 

 type that may occur. And yet, look at the flowers we see 

 around us here to-day, and compare them with the pictures, 

 drawings, or descriptions of the flowers as introduced a hundred 

 years ago ! Compare them with the flowers of fifty, aye of twenty 

 years ago ! Now, how can we account for this marvellous 

 development, this appearance of new and different types and 

 classes, this almost embarras de richesse in varieties of the 

 Chrysanthemum, produced and fixed in comparatively so short 

 a space in natural plant-life history ? 



It appears to me to be simply and solely the result of the 

 intelligence, diligence, and careful practical observation of 

 gardeners, whether English or French, Japanese or Chinese. 

 All plants, I take it, have inherent in themselves, as part of the 

 dowry with which a good and wise God dowered them in the 

 beginning, a marvellous capacity for development, improvement, 

 and variation — a capacity which would in a natural ctate 

 develop itself very, very slowly, taking centuries, and perhaps 

 ages upon ages, to complete ; and even then, probably, by far 

 the great majority of variations and developments would never 

 live to become established and fixed forms, but would perish in 

 the great natural struggle for existence — the strong and coarse 

 varieties overshadowing and stifling out the weaker growers, and 

 the lower and more easily reproduced forms crowding out those 

 of higher organisation and comparatively slower reproductive 

 powers. But when once man takes a kindly interest in any 

 plant, and bestows upon it his patient, watchful care, and his 

 intelligence, the pace of development," is vastly — immeasurably — 

 hastened ; and what would have taken ages and ages to appear 

 in nature, and perhaps then would have failed to last, is accom- 

 plished by man in comparatively a^ few years, and is securely 

 and permanently fixed and established for just so long as he 

 chooses to continue and extend his beneficent guardianship and 

 protection. 



For though I recognise most fully the great and all-pervading 

 natural laws expressed by the ijerms, " The struggle for 

 existence," and "The survival of tlje fittest," yet I cannot but 

 think that those laws, true as theyi no doubt are for all plants 

 and animals and insects in a natural state, have no place, or 



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