Many exotic plants
have pollen utterly worthless, in the same exact condition as in the
most sterile hybrids. When, on the one hand, we see domesticated
animals and plants, though often weak and sickly, yet breeding quite
freely under confinement; and when, on the other hand, we see
individuals, though taken young from a state of nature, perfectly
tamed, long-lived, and healthy (of which I could give numerous
instances), yet having their reproductive system so seriously affected
by unperceived causes as to fail in acting, we need not be surprised
at this system, when it does act under confinement, acting not quite
regularly, and producing offspring not perfectly like their parents or
variable.
Sterility has been said to be the bane of horticulture; but on this
view we owe variability to the same cause which produces sterility;
and variability is the source of all the choicest productions of the
garden. I may add, that as some organisms will breed most freely under
the most unnatural conditions (for instance, the rabbit and ferret
kept in hutches), showing that their reproductive system has not been
thus affected; so will some animals and plants withstand domestication
or cultivation, and vary very slightly--perhaps hardly more than in a
state of nature.
A long list could easily be given of "sporting plants;" by this term
gardeners mean a single bud or offset, which suddenly assumes a new
and sometimes very different character from that of the rest of the
plant.
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