148 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



healthy one, and they cannot form structures so as to thrive under 

 them. Professor de Vries makes the seemingly strange remark that 

 " the origin of species is not the same thing as the origin of specific 

 characters.""^' But a species is only known by its specific characters, 

 and whenever these arise for the first time a new species must come into 

 existence. He adds, We hardly know what specific characters are." 

 Surely any Flora in which species are described would tell him? 



He says that " the only means by which breeders can get new forms 

 is by hybridization."! Is he not aware that numerous forms of garden 

 vegetables arose solely by cultivation in various soils — e.g., the cabbage 

 tribe, many forms of carrots, turnips, and radishes, the original garden 

 pansies, Shirley poppies ? 



He next remarks " that the limits of collective species arose by the 

 dropping out of links in the chain of elementary species."! But what 

 proof is there that the links ever existed? The " links " between his 

 original 0, Lamarchiana and each of his own mutants, mutations, or 

 species — for he uses all three terms — never appeared. If the new 

 environment be markedly different from the old one, then the seedlings 

 grow up markedly different in response to it. The amount of change in 

 them is regulated by that of the environment. 



" The study of specific characters will some day form the most 

 important branch of investigation." I This has been done by ecology. 

 Its great value lies in the proofs (by induction and experiment) of the 

 origin of species by response to the conditions of life. E.g. Professor 

 E. Warming, in speaking of the xerophytic characters of desert plants, 

 observes : ' ' The question arises whether these adaptations to the 

 medium should be regarded as a result of natural selection, or whether 

 they owe their origin to the action of the conditions of the medium, in 

 modifying forms, exercised directly. I adopt the latter view. The 

 characters of adaptation, thus directly acquired, have become fixed and 

 hereditary. "§ 



Professor de Vries would regard selection as an element in the 

 origin of species by mutation ; but Darwin wrote : ** By the term definitei 

 action [i.e., of changed conditions of life] I mean the action of such a 

 nature that when many individuals of the same variety are exposed 

 during several generations to any change in their physical conditions of 

 life, all or nearly all the individuals are modified in the same manner. 

 A new sub-variety would thus be produced without the aid of selec- 

 tion. "|| 



Ecology has proved this to be the true and only origin of species. 

 Yet Professor de Vries, while referring to the fact that ** many authors 

 have suggested that altered conditions of life exert a direct influence on 

 animals and plants . . . and evoke an adaptive response, " nevertheless 

 repudiates it by saying : " But this assumption [?] seems to be no more 

 than a begging of the question we are trying to answer. ' ' 11 The Pro- 

 fessor thus confesses that he knows not what ecology has done ! 



* p. 56, t p. 59. X p. 60. § Lnqoa Santa, p. 465. 1892. 



II A?i. and PI. under Dom. ii. 271. ^ p. 200. 



