576 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



NATURAL SELECTION. 

 (A Reply.) 



I do not think this Journal is a fitting place for a controversy; but, 

 as the late Editor has inserted Mr. Druery's criticism of my statements, 

 I would ask to be allowed to reply, but as briefly as possible. As my 

 paper on " The True Darwinism " is also published (p. 1), the reader can 

 judge for himself between us. 



Mr. Druery alludes to the many individual variations among ferns 

 found in a comparatively limited area, and infers (I presume) that such 

 arise from congenital causes within the spores. But, as De Vries has 

 pointed out, you may make a border as uniform as possible, but it is 

 impossible to prevent slight differences, which seedlings find out for 

 themselves and which influence their growth ; and there is no proof that 

 such is not the case in nature. The fact that plants do at once adapt 

 themselves to changes in the conditions of life is a generalisation from 

 the widest induction, as all ecologists know, as well as from experimental 

 proof. 



Such variations as he found amongst the ferns, or as occur abundantly 

 in cultivation after a wild plant has once " broken " (as gardeners say), 

 may be called " indefinite," but not in the sense in which Darwin uses 

 the term, implying that comparatively few only would survive, but the 

 majority would die, not because of the struggle for life, but because they 

 have " injurious "or " inadaptive " characters, which are supposed to be 

 " mortal." Gardeners' varieties, on the other hand, would all live if they 

 be not starved. 



Mr. Druery regards "dwarfs" and "depauperates" as having "in- 

 jurious " structures, and appeals to General Tom Thumb. But it all 

 depends upon circumstances. Nanism per se is not " injurious " ; nor even 

 is a depauperate state of the plant if it be left alone, and can have enough 

 to live upon. Thus Ranunculus sceleratus will grow five feet high in 

 water, but only a foot or so in damp soil, and only three inches 

 in the very dry ground, rarely inundated by the Nile, close to the 

 Great Pyramid ; yet it persists there, year after year. Tom Thumb, 

 as a son of ordinary-sized people, was an " abnormal monstrosity," 

 and would probably not have had much chance of surviving in a severe 

 struggle for life. But Mr. Druery forgets the Pigmies, which get 

 on very well at home. Similarly a depauperate variety of a plant, by 

 constant response to poor conditions, may actually become a fixed variety, 

 as has occurred in many genera ; some species are actually called 

 depauperata. It is often said you cannot draw a hard-and-sharp line 

 between monstrosities and varieties, because many of the former are 

 hereditary and quite healthy. But as they, by far the oftener, arise 

 under cultivation, the induction is that they are due to unnatural con- 



