1877.] 
CULTURE THE CHIEF SOURCE OP IMPROVEMENT. 
81 
of this process alone he is “ master of the situation.” We must admit that 
crosses are effectual in producing variety, but I think I shall prove that without 
the aid of culture they are incapable of yielding more than very primary results, 
though as it would appear that we live in an age of results, we cannot tell what 
a season may bring forth. 
With the battle of races in their normal forms, or of weeds in their 
“ wilderness-homes,” I have nothing here to do. There the fight is to the 
strongest, though it appears to be but a natural guarantee against rapid pro¬ 
gress, that weeds, even though they be the strongest, shall so increase as to kinds, 
as to become themselves barriers to the improving advance of each other, and 
that thus the “ curse ” of briars and weeds is indefinitely perpetuated and up¬ 
held without any kind of extraneous aid. Cultivation alters all this. If we 
single out a plant and give it changed soil and situation, a marked improvement 
will become manifest before very many years, an improvement such as would 
never have taken place had it remained in its native soil, doing indefinite battle 
with others of its kind. Even among human beings, we find that progressive change 
does not go on without some kind of cultural incentive foreign to the individual. 
What the moral or the mental incentive is to the human being, such is the in¬ 
fluence of culture to the plant; and it rests for ever a normal form, or changes 
to a better, as these are given or withheld. 
In confirmation of this, I may note that we profit by taking advantage of such 
subjects as denote marked changes. For instance, there are the double forms of very 
many normal single-flowered plants, as the Daisies, Primroses, Pelargoniums, &c. ; 
these singular sports, as beautiful as they are permanent, are begotten, as 
none will deny, of cultivation. Observe the old Sweet Scabious, cultivated 
for a century or more, and persistently constant, but it yields at last, and we 
now possess a lovely variety, which goes on increasing in beauty and size, now 
that once the normal form has been forced to develope new features by continued 
culture. Gradually the inner crown of florets has gained in size and consistency, 
until now we produce blooms of the choicest character from simple seed-sowing. 
Turn to tlie Fuchsia. It is not many years since the first plant was bought 
of the sailor’s wife, and fewer still since the first double form appeared, but now 
that constant and good culture is assured, we have “ Avalanches ” and similar 
immensities as abundant as ‘‘ new moons.” Again, in reference to the lovely 
forms of double-blossomed Pelargoniums, of the type of Bedding Pelargoniums 
more particularly, we all remember, a few years back, the appearance of the first 
double, or in other words, the first “ break yet how numerous have they already 
become ! Take, again, the Rose, Pyrethrum, and later still, the Portulaca; but 
lately the latter was constantly a single flower, yet to-day it may be found con¬ 
stant in many double forms. What is more, these double-flowered plants are 
self-seeding, and hence self-producing in endless variety. Let the mind’s eye 
wander over the fields of Hollyhocks, Dahlias, Sunflowers (in the culture of 
which last the Abyssinians have gained a century on us), and the Potentillas, 
