f the original organism and work on several
islands) adapted to new ends. As we assume his discrimination, and his
forethought, and his steadiness of object, to be incomparably greater
that those qualities in man, so we may suppose the beauty and
complications of the adaptations of the new races and their differences
from the original stock to be greater than in the domestic races
produced by man's agency: the ground-work of his labours we may aid by
supposing that the external conditions of the volcanic island, from its
continued emergence and the occasional introduction of new immigrants,
vary; and thus to act on the reproductive system of the organism, on
which he is at work, and so keep its organization somewhat plastic. With
time enough, such a Being might rationally (without some unknown law
opposed him) aim at almost any result.

{224} A corresponding passage occurs in _Origin_, Ed. i. p. 83, vi.
p. 101, where however Nature takes the place of the selecting
Being.

For instance, let this imaginary Being wish, from seeing a plant growing
on the decaying matter in a forest and choked by other plants, to give
it power of growing on the rotten stems of trees, he would commence
selecting every seedling whose berries were in the smallest degree more
attractive to tree-frequenting birds, so as to cause a proper
dissemination of the seeds, and at the same time he would select those
plants which had in the slightest degree more and more power of drawing
nutriment from rotten wood; and he would destroy all other seedlings
with less of this power. He might thus, in the course of century after
century, hope to make the plant by degrees grow on rotten wood, even
high up on trees, wherever birds dropped the non-digested seeds. He
might then, if the organization of the plant was plastic, attempt by
continued selection of chance seedlings to make it grow on less and less
rotten wood, till it would grow on sound wood{225}. Supposing again,
during these changes the plant failed to seed quite freely from
non-impregnation, he might begin selecting seedlings with a little
sweeter <or> differently tasted honey or pollen, to tempt insects to visit
the flowers regularly: having effected this, he might wish, if it
profited the plant, to render abortive the stamens and pistils in
different flowers, which he could do by continued selection. By such
steps he might aim at making a plant as wonderfully related to other
organi