114 



JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 



NATURAL SELECTION. 

 By Charles T. Druery, V.M.H., F.L.S. 



On perusing the several articles by Professor Henslow in your Journal of 

 December 1906 I find that his observations on the Darwinian theory are 

 based throughout on definite assertions which so utterly clash with rny 

 own personal experiences in the study of variation, both under wild and 

 cultivated conditions, that I venture to claim the privilege of the same 

 channel of publication in order to put forward the facts, not the theories, 

 which to my mind utterly controvert them. In order that as a pre- 

 liminary the nature of my experience may be properly weighed it may 

 be well for me to mention that for the last thirty years I have made 

 a special study of variation in our native ferns, hunting for varieties in 

 many parts of the kingdom and being successful in finding a considerable 

 number. In this way I have naturally become intimately acquainted 

 with the conditions under which these marked varieties occur, and as 

 I have subsequently bred from them culturally, I am also practically 

 familiar with that side of the subject. In addition to my individual 

 experience this pursuit has brought me into communication with a 

 number of gentlemen who had, and have, the same hobby and represent 

 the pioneers and their successors in continuous and well-recorded varietal 

 research extending now over considerably more than half a century. 

 The result of all this is that our few species of native ferns constitute 

 a plant family entirely unique among the plants of the world in having 

 been most attentively studied by a large number of intelligent persons 

 from the point of view of spontaneous wild variation of which fully two 

 thousand cases are recorded. 



They are unique, too, in another sense, since not only have records 

 been kept throughout that period, and nature prints taken of the most 

 marked forms, but the identical plants themselves largely survive in a 

 living state, leaving thus nothing to the imagination as regards their 

 character or their constancy. With this preliminary I will now quote 

 seriatim those assertions of Professor Henslow to which I have alluded, 

 numbering them for simplicity of reference and following them up with 

 the facts which appear to my mind to confute them entirely. 



1. " Plants and animals do not die in consequence of slight variation 

 of structure. Darwin's theory therefore falls to the ground " (p. 90, 

 R.H.S. Journal, December 1906). 



2. " But, apart from abnormal monstrosities, nature has never been 

 known to make ' ill-adapted types ' " (p. 90, December 1906). 



These are both unqualified assertions incapable of proof, but on the 

 contrary easily disproved. With reference to No. 2 I have in a previous 

 article alluded to the disadvantage of dwarfing variation to the individual 

 plant, but as a recognisable instance of nature making an ill-adapted type 

 (i.e. of course in the struggle for existence) I will take the dwarf specimen of 

 humanity, General Tom Thumb, and ask, what chance of survival would he 



