Page:Darwinism by Alfred Wallace 1889.djvu/99

III 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. The 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.

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