Origin of Species Variorum

Comparison with 1861

a remarkable fact; more especially when we reflect how many species there are, which, though resembling each other most closely, are utterly sterile when intercrossed. Several considerations, however, render this fertility of domestic varieties less remarkable. .. .. .. .. In the first place we must remember how ignorant we are regarding the precise cause of sterility, both when species are crossed and when species are removed from their natural conditions. On this latter head I have not had space to adduce the many remarkable facts which could have been given; with respect to sterility from crossing, reflect on the difference in the result of reciprocal crosses,— reflect on the singular cases in which a plant can be more easily fertilised by foreign pollen than by its own. When we think over such cases, and on that of the differently coloured varieties of Verbascum presently to be given, we must feel how ignorant we are, and how little likely it is that we should understand why certain forms are fertile and other forms are sterile when crossed. It can, in the second place, be clearly shown that mere external dissimilarity between two species does not determine their greater or lesser degree of sterility when crossed; and we may apply the same rule to domestic varieties. In the third place, some eminent naturalists believe that a long course of domestication tends to eliminate sterility in the successive generations of hybrids which were at first only slightly sterile; and if this be so, we surely ought not to expect to find sterility both appearing and disappearing under nearly the same domestic conditions of life. ↑ ↑ Lastly, and this seems to me .. the most important consideration, new races of animals and plants are produced under domestication chiefly by man's methodical and unconscious power of selection, for his own use and pleasure: he neither wishes to select, nor could select, slight differences in the reproductive system, or other constitutional differences correlated with the reproductive system. Domestic productions are less closely adapted to climate and to the other physical conditions of the countries which they inhabit than are those in a state of nature, for they can generally be removed to other and differently constituted countries with entire impunity. Man supplies his several varieties with the same food; he treats them in nearly the same manner, and does not wish to alter their general habits of life. Nature acts uniformly and slowly during vast periods of time on the whole organisation, in any way which may be for each creature's own good; and thus she may, either directly, or more probably indirectly, through correlation, modify the reproductive systems of the several descendants from any one species. Seeing this difference in the process of selection, as carried on by man and nature, we need not be surprised at some difference in the result. ↑

I have as yet spoken as if the varieties of the same