From a remote period to the present day, under climates and circumstances as
different as it is possible to conceive, organic beings of all kinds, when
domesticated or cultivated, have varied. We see this with the many domestic
races of quadrupeds and birds belonging to different orders, with goldfish and
silkworms, with plants of many kinds, raised in various quarters of the world.
In the deserts of northern Africa the date-palm has yielded thirty-eight
varieties; in the fertile plains of India it is notorious how many varieties
of rice and of a host of other plants exist; in a single Polynesian island,
twenty-four varieties of the bread-fruit, the same number of the banana, and
twenty-two varieties of the arum, are cultivated by the natives; the mulberry-
tree in India and Europe has yielded many varieties serving as food for the
silkworm; and in China sixty-three varieties of the bamboo are used for
various domestic purposes. (22/5. On the date-palm see Vogel 'Annals and Mag.
of Nat. Hist.' 1854 page 460. On Indian varieties Dr. F. Hamilton 'Transact.
Linn. Soc.' volume 14 page 296. On the varieties cultivated in Tahiti see Dr.
Bennett in Loudon's 'Mag. of N. Hist.' volume 5 1832 page 484. Also Ellis
'Polynesian Researches' volume 1 pages 370, 375. On twenty varieties of the
Pandanus and other trees in the Marianne Island see 'Hooker's Miscellany'
volume 1 page 308. On the bamboo in China see Huc 'Chinese Empire' volume 2
page 307.) These facts, and innumerable others which could be added, indicate
that a change of almost any kind in the conditions of life suffices to cause
variability--different changes acting on different organisms.
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