Hugo de Vries

“ Perhaps on close inspection you may find in some cases a slight difference, some character being not as fully developed in the hybrid as in the species. But when such is not the case, or where the opportunity for such a closer examination is wanting, a hybrid may easily be taken for a specimen of the pure race. Now take the seeds of your plant and sow them. If you had not supposed it to be hybrid you will be astonished at finding among its progeny some of a wholly different type. You will be led to conclude that you are observing a sudden change in structure such as is usually called a sport. ”

“ It is not by mere chance that the variations move in the required direction. They do go, according to Darwin's view, in all directions, or at least in many. If these include the useful ones, and if this is repeated a number of times, cumulation is possible; if not, there is simply no progression, and the type remains stable through the ages. Natural selection is continually acting as a sieve, throwing out the useless changes and retaining the real improvements. ”

“ If a variety is observed in a number of specimens at the time of its first discovery, and at a locality not studied previously, it takes the aspect of an old form of limited distribution, and little can be learned as to the circumstances under which it arose. If on the contrary it occurs in very small numbers or perhaps even in a single individual, and if the spot where it is found is located so that it could hardly have escaped previous observation, then the presumption of a recent origin seems justified. ”

“ This is what we term correlation. The colors of the different organs are always in agreement. It is true that they require the concurrence of [144] light for development, and that in the dark or in a faint light the seedlings are apt to remain green when they should become purple, but aside from such consideration all organs always come true to their color, whether pure green and white, or whether these are combined with the blue tinge. This constancy is so absolute that the colors of the different organs convey the suggestion, that they are only separate marks of a single character. ”

“ There is no reason to suppose that the world is reaching the end of its development, and so we are to infer that the production of new species and varieties is still going on. In reality, new forms are observed to originate from time to time, both wild and in cultivation, and such facts do not leave any doubt as to their origin from other allied types, and according to natural and general laws. ”

“ Fifty or sixty, and often more, bags of seeds are by no means uncommon for a single experiment, and in ordinary years the harvest of my garden is preserved in over a thousand separate lots.
Complying with these conditions, the origin of species may be seen as easily as any other phenomenon. It is only necessary to have a plant in a mutable condition. Not all species are in such a state at present, and therefore I have begun by ascertaining which were stable and which were not. ”

“ In concluding I will point out another danger which in the principle of vicinism may be avoided. If you see a plant in a garden with all the characteristics of its species, how can you be sure that it is truly a representative of the species, and not a hybrid? ”

“ The hybrid offspring will therefore, in the main, have the character of the species and be indistinguishable from it, or show only such differences as escape ordinary observation. When occurring in the seeds of the variety they betray themselves as soon as the differential characters are displayed. Between the thousands of flowering plants of a white variety the hybrids will instantly catch the eye by their red or blue corollas. Quite the contrary effect results from the admixture of hybrids with the seeds of the species itself. ”

“ In conclusion, summing up all our arguments, we may state that there is a broad analogy between breeding selection in the widest sense of the word, including variety testing, race improvement and the trial of the breeding ability on one side, and natural selection on the other. This analogy however, points to the importance of the selection between elementary species, and the very subordinate role of intraspecific selection in nature. It strongly supports our view of the origin of species by mutation instead of continuous selection. ”

“ Of course its history is unknown and it is impossible to decide whether all the tall and dwarf forms, or starchy and sweet varieties, dented or rounded kernels, and hundreds of others are older than culture or have come into existence during historic times, or as some assume, through the agency of man. But our main point now is not the origin, but only the existence of constant and sharply differentiated forms within botanical species. Nearly every cultivated plant affords instances of such diversity. ”

“ I hope that I have succeeded in showing that the difference between elementary species, or, as they are often called, smaller or subspecies, on the one hand and varieties on the other, is quite a marked one. However, in order to recognize this principle it is necessary to limit the term variety, to those propagating themselves by seed and are of pure and not of hybrid origin. ”

“ Some varieties are as old as culture itself, and it is generally known that the Romans cultivated the white form of the opium-poppy and used the foliage of the red variety of the sugarbeet as a vegetable.
In our time flowers and fruits are changing nearly as rapidly as the fancies and tastes of men. Every year new forms are introduced and usurp the place of older ones. Many are soon forgotten. But if we look at old country gardens, a goodly number of fine and valued old sorts are still to be found. ”

“ His belief, which was general at that time, was "That cultivation has not been found to change well defined kinds, and that improvement can be best attained by selecting new and superior varieties, which nature occasionally produces, as if inviting the husbandman to stretch forth his hand and cultivate them." ”

“ We are not to cross species or varieties, or even accidental plants. We must cross unit-characters, and consider the plants only as the bearers of these units. We may assume that these units are represented in the hereditary substance of the cell-nucleus by definite bodies of too small a size to be seen, but constituting together the chromosomes. ”

“ Some species must have been more adapted to northern climates, others to the soils of western or eastern regions and so on. These qualities must have decided the general lines of the distribution, and the species must have been segregated according to their respective climatic qualities, and their adaptability to soil and weather. A struggle for life and a natural selection must have accompanied and guided the distribution, but there is no reason to assume that the various forms were changed by this process, and that we see them now endowed with other qualities than they had at the outset. ”

“ But evolutionary lines are of great length, and the evolution of a flower, or of an insectivorous plant is a way with many sidepaths. It is the sieve that keeps evolution on the main line, killing all, or nearly all that try to go in other directions. By this means natural selection is the one directing cause of the broad lines of evolution. ”

“ This general conviction is the basis on which we may build up a more sharply defined distinction between elementary species and varieties. It is an old rule in systematic botany, that no form is to be constituted a species upon the basis of a single character. All authors agree on this point; specific differences are derived from the totality of the attributes, not from one organ or one quality. This rule is intimately connected with the idea that varieties are derived from species. The species is the typical, really existing form from which the variety has originated by a definite change. ”

“ Hence we should conclude that when a species is converted into a new type in one locality this is only to be considered as one of numerous possible ones, and its alteration would not in the least change the aspect of the remainder of the species.
But even with this restriction the general belief is not supported by the evidence of the evening-primroses. There is neither a slow nor a sudden change of all the individuals. On the contrary, the vast majority remain unchanged; thousands are seen exactly repeating the original prototype yearly, both in the native field and in my garden. ”

“ In the second place I have had occasion more than once to assert that retrogression, though seemingly consisting in the disappearance of some quality, need not, as a rule, be considered as a complete loss. Quite on the contrary, it is very probable that real losses are extremely rare, if not wholly lacking. Ordinarily the loss is only apparent, the capacity becomes inactive only, but is not destroyed. ”

“ In my opinion it is the struggle for life which is the cause of this apparent rarity; which is nothing else than the premature death of all the individuals that so vary from the common type of their species as to be incapable of development under prevailing circumstances. It is obviously without consequence whether these deviations are of a fluctuating or of a mutating nature. Hence we may conclude that useless mutations will soon die out and will disappear without leaving any progeny. ”

“ Quite on the contrary the facts that strike us most forcibly as being reversions are those that are apt to give us an insight into the systematic affinity of a higher degree. We are disposed to make use of them in our attempts to perfect the natural system and to remould it in such a way as to become a pedigree of the related groups. Such cases of atavism no doubt occur, but the anomalies referred to them must be interpreted merely on the ground of our assumptions as to the relative places in the system to be assigned to the different forms. ”