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Updated: June 10, 2025
Finally, De Candolle admits that out of the 300 species, which will be enumerated in his Prodromus as belonging to the oak family, at least two-thirds are provisional species, that is, are not known strictly to fulfil the definition above given of a true species.
De Candolle pointed out that the old common names of plants, such as roses and clover, poplars and oaks, nearly all refer to genera. The type of the clovers is rich in color, and the shape of the flower-heads and the single flowers escape ordinary observation; but notwithstanding this, clovers are easily recognized, even if new types come to hand.
The cultivation of the various varieties in India, China, and the Malay Archipelago dates, says De Candolle, 'from an epoch impossible to realise. Its diffusion, as that great but very oracular authority remarks, may go back to a period 'contemporary with or even anterior to that of the human races. What this remarkably illogical sentence may mean I am at a loss to comprehend; perhaps M. de Candolle supposes that the banana was originally cultivated by pre-human gorillas; perhaps he merely intends to say that before men began to separate they sent special messengers on in front of them to diffuse the banana in the different countries they were about to visit.
Such being the results of the want of adequate knowledge, how is it likely to be when our knowledge is largely increased? The judgment of so practised a botanist as De Candolle is important in this regard, and it accords with that of other botanists of equal experience.
De Candolle took it and returned to Geneva, where he became not only famous but beloved by all the inhabitants. This summer he gave a course of lectures on botany, which has been the theme of universal admiration.
"Commonness will prevail," as De Candolle said in speaking of the graminaceous plants. The era of equality means the triumph of mediocrity. It is disappointing, but inevitable; for it is one of time's revenges.
But the only material sequence we know, or can clearly conceive, in plants and animals, is that from parent to progeny; and, as De Candolle implies, the origin of species and that of races can hardly be much unlike, nor governed by other than the same laws, whatever these may be.
This difference, observed in the same family, appears to me very remarkable, though it is in no way contradictory to the results obtained by De Candolle in his ingenious researches on the chemical properties of plants. The collecting of these gummy and resinous substances is a trade in the village of Javita.
The progress of opinion upon this subject in one generation is not badly represented by that of De Candolle himself, who is by no means prone to adopt new views without much consideration.
The species of all kinds which inhabit oceanic islands are few in number compared with those on equal continental areas: Alph. de Candolle admits this for plants, and Wollaston for insects.
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