e 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. See
how different the leaves of the cabbage are, and how extremely alike the
flowers; how unlike the flowers of the heartsease are, and how alike the
leaves; how much the fruit of the different kinds of gooseberries differ
in size, colour, shape, and hairiness, and yet the flowers present very
slight differences. It is not that the varieties which differ largely
in some one point do not differ at all in other points; this is hardly
ever--I speak after careful observation--perhaps never, the case. The
law of correlated variation, the importance of which should never be
overlooked, will ensure some differences; but, as a general rule, it
cannot be doubted that the continued selection of slight variations,
either in the leaves, the flowers, or the fruit, will produce races
differing from each other chiefly in these characters.

It may be objected that the principle of selection has been reduced to
methodical practice for scarcely more than three-quarters of a century;
it has certainly been more attended to of late years, and many treatises
have been published on the subject; and the result has been, in a
corresponding degree, rapid and important. But it is very far from
true that the principle is a modern discovery. I could give several
references to works of high antiquity, in which the full importance of
the principle is acknowledged. In rude and barba