y at first appear but little
related to our subject, and to devote the latter part to general
discussions. Whenever I have found it necessary to give numerous details,
in support of any proposition or conclusion, small type has been used. The
reader {2} will, I think, find this plan a convenience, for, if he does not
doubt the conclusion or care about the details, he can easily pass them
over; yet I may be permitted to say that some of the discussions thus
printed deserve attention, at least from the professed naturalist.

It may be useful to those who have read nothing about Natural Selection, if
I here give a brief sketch of the whole subject and of its bearing on the
origin of species.[1] This is the more desirable, as it is impossible in
the present work to avoid many allusions to questions which will be fully
discussed in future volumes.

From a remote period, in all parts of the world, man has subjected many
animals and plants to domestication or culture. Man has no power of
altering the absolute conditions of life; he cannot change the climate of
any country; he adds no new element to the soil; but he can remove an
animal or plant from one climate or soil to another, and give it food on
which it did not subsist in its natural state. It is an error to speak of
man "tampering with nature" and causing variability. If organic beings had
not possessed an inherent tendency to vary, man could have done nothing.[2]
He unintentionally exposes his animals and plants to various conditions of
life, and variability supervenes, which he cannot even prevent or check.
Consider the simple case of a plant which has been cultivated during a long
time in its native country, and which consequently has not been subjected
to any change of climate. It has been protected to a certain extent from
the competing roots of plants of other kinds; it has generally been grown
in manured soil, but probably not richer than that of many an alluvial
flat; and lastly, it has been exposed to changes in its conditions, being
grown sometimes in one district and sometimes in another, in different
soils. Under such circumstances, {3} scarcely a plant can be named, though
cultivated in the rudest manner, which has not given birth to several
varieties. It can hardly be maintained that during the many changes which
this earth has undergone, and during the natural migrations of plants from
one land or island to another, tenanted by different species, that such