many large genera. As examples we may take the roses, the brambles, and the willows as well illustrating this fact. In Mr. Baker's Revision of the British Roses (published by the Linnean Society in 1863), he includes under the single species, Rosa canina-the common dog-rose- -no less than twenty-eight named varieties distinguished by more or less constant characters and often confined to special localities, and to these are referred about seventy of the species of British and continental botanists. Of the genus Rubus or bramble, five British species are given in Bentham's Handbook of the British Flora, while in the fifth edition of Babington's Manual of British Botany, published about the same time, no less than forty-five species are described. Of willows (Salix) the same two works enumerate fifteen and thirty-one species respectively. hawkweeds (Hieracium) are equally puzzling, for while Mr. Bentham admits only seven British species, Professor Babington describes no less than thirty-two, besides several named varieties.

The

A French botanist, Mons. A. Jordan, has collected numerous forms of a common little plant, the spring whitlow-grass (Draba verna); he has cultivated these for several successive years, and declares that they preserve their peculiarities unchanged; he also says that they each come true from seed, and thus possess all the characteristics of true species. He has described no less than fifty-two such species or permanent varieties, all found in the south of France; and he urges botanists to follow his example in collecting, describing, and cultivating all such varieties as may occur in their respective districts. Now, as the plant is very common almost all over Europe and ranges from North America to the Himalayas, the number of similar forms over this wide area would probably have to be reckoned by hundreds if not by thousands.

The class of facts now adduced must certainly be held to prove that in many large genera and in some single species there is a very large amount of variation, which renders it quite impossible for experts to agree upon the limits of species. We will now adduce a few striking cases of individual variation.

The distinguished botanist, Alp. de Candolle, made a special study of the oaks of the whole world, and has stated some

remarkable facts as to their variability. He declares that on the same branch of oak he has noted the following variations : (1) In the length of the petiole, as one to three; (2) in the form of the leaf, being either elliptical or obovoid; (3) in the margin being entire, or notched, or even pinnatifid; (4) in the extremity being acute or blunt; (5) in the base being sharp, blunt, or cordate; (6) in the surface being pubescent or smooth; (7) the perianth varies in depth and lobing; (8) the stamens vary in number, independently; (9) the anthers are mucronate or blunt; (10) the fruit stalks vary greatly in length, often as one to three; (11) the number of fruits varies; (12) the form of the base of the cup varies; (13) the scales of the cup vary in form; (14) the proportions of the acorns vary; (15) the times of the acorns ripening and falling vary.

Besides this, many species exhibit well-marked varieties which have been described and named, and these are most numerous in the best-known species. Our British oak (Quercus robur) has twenty-eight varieties; Quercus Lusitanica has eleven; Quercus calliprinos has ten; and Quercus coccifera eight.

A most remarkable case of variation in the parts of a common flower has been given by Dr. Hermann Müller. He examined two hundred flowers of Myosurus minimus, among which he found thirty-five different proportions of the sepals, petals, and anthers, the first varying from four to seven, the second from two to five, and the third from two to ten. Five sepals occurred in one hundred and eighty-nine out of the two hundred, but of these one hundred and five had three petals, forty-six had four petals, and twenty-six had five petals; but in each of these sets the anthers varied in number from three

to eight, or from two to nine. We have here an example of the same amount of "independent variability" that, as we have seen, occurs in the various dimensions of birds and mammals; and it may be taken as an illustration of the kind and degree of variability that may be expected to occur among small and little specialised flowers.1

In the common wind-flower (Anemone nemorosa) an almost equal amount of variation occurs; and I have myself gathered

1 Nature, vol. xxvi. p. 81.

in one locality flowers varying from inch to 12 inch in diameter; the bracts varying from 11⁄2 inch to 4 inches across; and the petaloid sepals either broad or narrow, and varying in number from five to ten. Though generally pure white on their upper surface, some specimens are a full pink, while others have a decided bluish tinge.

Mr. Darwin states that he carefully examined a large number of plants of Geranium phæum and G. pyrenaicum (not perhaps truly British but frequently found wild), which had escaped from cultivation, and had spread by seed in an open plantation; and he declares that "the seedlings varied in almost every single character, both in their flowers and foliage, to a degree which I have never seen exceeded; yet they could not have been exposed to any great change of their conditions."1

The following examples of variation in important parts of plants were collected by Mr. Darwin and have been copied from his unpublished MSS. :

"De Candolle (Mem. Soc. Phys. de Genève, tom. ii. part ii. p. 217) states that Papaver bracteatum and P. orientale present indifferently two sepals and four petals, or three sepals and six petals, which is sufficiently rare with other species of the genus.'

"In the Primulaceae and in the great class to which this family belongs the unilocular ovarium is free, but M. Dubury (Mem. Soc. Phys. de Genève, tom. ii. p. 406) has often found individuals in Cyclamen hederæfolium, in which the base of the ovary was connected for a third part of its length with the inferior part of the calyx."

"M. Aug. St. Hilaire (Sur la Gynobase, Mem. des Mus. d'Hist. Nat., tom. x. p. 134), speaking of some bushes of the Gomphia oleæfolia, which he at first thought formed a quite distinct species, says: 'Voilà donc dans un même individu des loges et un style qui se rattachent tantôt a un axe vertical, et tantôt a un gynobase; donc celui-ci n'est qu'un axe veritable; mais cet axe est deprimé au lieu d'être vertical." He adds (p. 151), 'Does not all this indicate that nature has tried, in a manner, in the family of Rutacea to produce from a single multilocular ovary, one-styled and symmetrical, several unilocular ovaries, each with its own style.' And he 1 Animals and Plants under Domestication, vol. ii. p. 258.

subsequently shows that, in Xanthoxylum monogynum, 'it often happens that on the same plant, on the same panicle, we find flowers with one or with two ovaries;' and that this is an important character is shown by the Rutaceae (to which Xanthoxylum belongs), being placed in a group of natural orders characterised by having a solitary ovary."

"De Candolle has divided the Cruciferæ into five sub-orders in accordance with the position of the radicle and cotyledons, yet Mons. T. Gay (Ann. des Scien. Nat., ser. i. tom. vii. p. 389) found in sixteen seeds of Petrocallis Pyrenaica the form of the embryo so uncertain that he could not tell whether it ought to be placed in the sub-orders 'Pleurorhizée' or 'Notorhizée'; so again (p. 400) in Cochlearia saxatilis M. Gay examined twenty-nine embryos, and of these sixteen were vigorously 'pleurorhizées,' nine had characters intermediate between pleuro- and notor- hizées, and four were pure notorhizées."

"M. Raspail asserts (Ann. des Scien. Nat., ser. i. tom. v. p. 440) that a grass (Nostus Borbonicus) is so eminently variable in its floral organisation, that the varieties might serve to make a family with sufficiently numerous genera and tribes— a remark which shows that important organs must be here variable."

Species which vary little.

The preceding statements, as to the great amount of variation occurring in animals and plants, do not prove that all species vary to the same extent, or even vary at all, but, merely, that a considerable number of species in every class, order, and family do so vary. It will have been observed that the examples of great variability have all been taken from common species, or species which have a wide range and are abundant in individuals. Now Mr. Darwin concludes, from an elaborate examination of the floras and faunas of several distinct regions, that common, wide ranging species, as a rule, vary most, while those that are confined to special districts and are therefore comparatively limited in number of individuals vary least. By a similar comparison it is shown that species of large genera vary more than species of small genera. These facts explain, to some extent, why the opinion has been so prevalent that variation is very limited in amount and exceptional in character. For

naturalists of the old school, and all mere collectors, were interested in species in proportion to their rarity, and would often have in their collections a larger number of specimens of a rare species than of a species that was very common. Now as these rare species do really vary much less than the common species, and in many cases hardly vary at all, it was very natural that a belief in the fixity of species should prevail. It is not, however, as we shall see presently, the rare, but the common and widespread species which become the parents of new forms, and thus the non-variability of any number of rare or local species offers no difficulty whatever in the way of the theory of evolution.

Concluding Remarks.

We have now shown in some detail, at the risk of being tedious, that individual variability is a general character of all common and widespread species of animals or plants; and, further, that this variability extends, so far as we know, to every part and organ, whether external or internal, as well as to every mental faculty. Yet more important is the fact that each part or organ varies to a considerable extent independently of other parts. Again, we have shown, by abundant evidence, that the variation that occurs is very large in amount-usually reaching 10 or 20, and sometimes even 25 per cent of the average size of the varying part; while not one or two only, but from 5 to 10 per cent of the specimens examined exhibit nearly as large an amount of variation. These facts have been brought clearly before the reader by means of numerous diagrams, drawn to scale and exhibiting the actual variations in inches, so that there can be no possibility of denying either their generality or their amount. The importance of this full exposition of the subject will be seen in future chapters, when we shall frequently have to refer to the facts here set forth, especially when we deal with the various theories of recent writers and the criticisms that have been made of the Darwinian theory.

A full exposition of the facts of variation among wild animals and plants is the more necessary, because comparatively few of them were published in Mr. Darwin's works, while the more important have only been made known since

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