relax his care in selection:
for the tendency to vary and to revert to ancestral forms will decrease,
so that he will have only occasionally to remove or destroy one of the
yearly offspring which departs from its type. Ultimately, with a large
stock, the effects of free crossing would keep, even without this care,
his breed true. By these means man can produce infinitely numerous
races, curiously adapted to ends, both most important and most
frivolous; at the same time that the effects of the surrounding
conditions, the laws of inheritance, of growth, and of variation, will
modify and limit his labours.

CHAPTER II

ON THE VARIATION OF ORGANIC BEINGS IN A WILD STATE; ON THE NATURAL MEANS
OF SELECTION; AND ON THE COMPARISON OF DOMESTIC RACES AND TRUE SPECIES

Having treated of variation under domestication, we now come to it in a
_state of nature_.

Most organic beings in a state of nature vary exceedingly little{218}: I
put out of the case variations (as stunted plants &c., and sea-shells in
brackish water{219}) which are directly the effect of external agencies
and which we do not _know are in the breed_{220}, or are _hereditary_.
The amount of hereditary variation is very difficult to ascertain,
because naturalists (partly from the want of knowledge, and partly from
the inherent difficulty of the subject) do not all agree whether certain
forms are species or races{221}. Some strongly marked races of plants,
comparable with the decided sports of horticulturalists, undoubtedly
exist in a state of nature, as is actually known by experiment, for
instance in the primrose and cowslip{222}, in two so-called species of
dandelion, in two of foxglove{223}, and I believe in some pines. Lamarck
has observed that, as long as we confine our attention to one limited
country, there is seldom much difficulty in deciding what forms to call
species and what varieties; and that it is when collections flow in from
all parts of the world that naturalists often feel at a loss to decide
the limit of variation. Undoubtedly so it is, yet amongst British plants
(and I may add land shells), which are probably better known than any in
the world, the best naturalists differ very greatly in the relative
proportions of what they call species and what varieties. In many genera
of insects, and shells, and plants, it seems almost hopeless to
establish which are which. In the higher classes there are less doubts;
though we find considerable