Origin of Species Variorum

I could give numerous instances), yet having their reproductive system so seriously affected by unperceived causes as to fail to act, we need not be surprised at this system, when it does act under confinement, acting .. irregularly, and producing offspring somewhat unlike their parents. .. .. I may add, that as some organisms breed freely under the most unnatural conditions (for instance, rabbits and ferrets kept in hutches), showing that their reproductive organs are not affected; so will some animals and plants withstand domestication or cultivation, and vary very slightly — perhaps hardly more than in a state of nature.

Some naturalists have maintained that all variations are connected with the act of sexual reproduction; but this is certainly an error; for I have given in another work a long list of "sporting plants," as they are called by gardeners; — that is, of plants which have suddenly produced a single bud with a new and sometimes widely different character from that of the other buds on the same plant. These bud-variations, as they may be named, can be propagated by grafts, offsets, &c., and sometimes by seed. They occur rarely under nature, but far from rarely under culture. As a single bud out of the many thousands produced year after year under uniform conditions on the same tree, has been known suddenly to assume a new character; and as buds on distinct trees, growing under different conditions, have sometimes yielded nearly the same variety — for instance, buds on peach-trees producing nectarines, and buds on common roses producing moss-roses — we clearly see that the nature of the conditions is of quite subordinate importance in comparison with the nature of the organism in determining each particular form of variation; — of not more importance than the nature of the spark by which a mass of com-