Few would readily believe in the natural capacity and years of practice
requisite to become even a skilful pigeon-fancier.
The same principles are followed by horticulturists; but the variations are
here often more abrupt. No one supposes that our choicest productions have
been produced by a single variation from the aboriginal stock. We have
proofs that this is not so in several cases in which exact records have
been kept; thus, to give a very trifling instance, the steadily increasing
size of the common gooseberry may be quoted. We see an astonishing
improvement in many florists' flowers, when the flowers of the present day
are compared with drawings made only twenty or thirty years ago. When a
race of plants is once pretty well established, the seed-raisers do not
pick out the best plants, but merely go over their seed-beds, and pull up
the "rogues," as they call the plants that deviate from the proper
standard. With animals this kind of selection is, in fact, likewise
followed; for hardly any one is so careless as to breed from his worst
animals.
In regard to plants, there is another means of observing the accumulated
effects of selection--namely, by comparing the diversity of flowers in the
different varieties of the same species in the flower-garden; the diversity
of leaves, pods, or tubers, or whatever part is valued, in the
kitchen-garden, in comparison with the flowers of the same varieties; and
the diversity of fruit of the same species in the orchard, in comparison
with the leaves and flowers of the same set of varieties.
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