The passage is given 'Bull. Soc. d'Acclimat.' 1858 page 11.) on comparing the flowers, fruit, and vegetables which were then cultivated with some excellent drawings made a hundred and fifty years previously, was struck with surprise at the great improvement which had been effected; and remarks that these ancient flowers and vegetables would now be rejected, not only by a florist but by a village gardener. Since the time of Buffon the work of improvement has steadily and rapidly gone on. Every florist who compares our present flowers with those figured in books published not long since, is astonished at the change. A well-known amateur (20/83. 'Journal of Horticulture' 1862 page 394.), in speaking of the varieties of Pelargonium raised by Mr. Garth only twenty-two years before, remarks, "What a rage they excited: surely we had attained perfection, it was said; and now not one of the flowers of those days will be looked at. But none the less is the debt of gratitude which we owe to those who saw what was to be done, and did it." Mr. Paul, the well-known horticulturist, in writing of the same flower (20/84. 'Gardener's Chronicle' 1857 page 85.), says he remembers when young being delighted with the portraits in Sweet's work; "but what are they in point of beauty compared with the Pelargoniums of this day? Here again nature did not advance by leaps; the improvement was gradual, and if we had neglected those very gradual advances, we must have foregone the present grand results." How well this practical horticulturist appreciates and illustrates the gradual and accumulative force of selection! The Dahlia has advanced in beauty in a like manner; the line of improvement being guided by fashion, and by the successive modifications which the flower slowly underwent. (20/85. See Mr. Wildman's address to the Floricult. Soc. in 'Gardener's Chronicle' 1843 page 86.) A steady and gradual change has been noticed in many other flowers: thus an old florist (20/86. 'Journal of Horticulture' October 24, 1865 page 239.), after describing the leading varieties of the Pink which were grown in 1813 adds, "the pinks of those days would now be scarcely grown as border- flowers." The improvement of so many flowers and the number of the varieties which have been raised is all the more striking when we hear that the earliest known flower-garden in Europe, namely at Padua, dates only from the year 1545. (20/87. Prescott 'Hist. of Mexico' volume 2 page 61.)
EFFECTS OF SELECTION, AS SHOWN BY THE PARTS MOST VALUED BY MAN PRESENTING THE GREATEST AMOUNT OF DIFFERENCE.
The power of long-continued selection, whether methodical or unconscious, or both combined, is well shown in a general way, namely, by the comparison of the differences between the varieties of distinct species, which are valued for different parts, such as for the leaves, or stems, or tubers, the seed, or fruit, or flowers. Whatever part man values most, that part will be found to present the greatest amount of difference. With trees cultivated for their fruit, Sageret remarks that the fruit is larger than in the parent-species, whilst with those cultivated for the seed, as with nuts, walnuts, almonds, chestnuts, etc., it is the seed itself which is larger; and he accounts for this fact by the fruit in the one case, and by the seed in the other, having been carefully attended to and selected during many ages. Gallesio has made the same observation. Godron insists on the diversity of the tuber in the potato, of the bulb in the onion, and of the fruit in the melon; and on the close similarity of the other parts in these same plants. (20/88. Sagaret 'Pomologie Physiologique' 1830 page 47; Gallesio 'Teoria della Riproduzione' 1816 page 88; Godron 'De l'Espece' 1859 tome 2 pages 63, 67, 70. In my tenth and eleventh chapters I have given details on the potato; and I can confirm similar remarks with respect to the onion. I have also shown how far Naudin concurs in regard to the varieties of the melon.)
In order to judge how far my own impression on this subject was correct, I cultivated numerous varieties of the same species close to one another.