Page - 47 - in The Origin of Species

SELECTION BY MAN 47 nary cases. If selection consisted merely in separating some very distinct variety, and breeding from it. the principle would be so obvious as hardly to be worth notice ; but its importance consists in the great effect produced by the accumulation in one direction, during successive generations, of differences absolutely inappreciable by an uneducated eye—differences which I for one have vainly attempted to appreciate. Not one man in a thousand has accuracy of eye and judgment sufficient to become an eminent breeder. If gifted with these qualities, and he studies his subject for years, and devotes his lifetime to it with indomitable perseverance, he will succeed, and may make great improvements ; if he wants any of these qualities, he will assuredly fail. Few would readily believe in the natural capacity and years of practice requisite to be- come 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 has not been 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 flor- ists' flowers, when the flowers of the present day are com- pared 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 ani- mals 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 com- parison with the leaves and flowers of the same set of vari-