The power of environment : nurture versus nature / editor: Henry Smith Williams, M.D., LL.D.

Date:
[1914]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The power of environment : nurture versus nature / editor: Henry Smith Williams, M.D., LL.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    barb” was in reality an all-the-year bearer. Meantime by further selection, aided now by hybridization, it was found possible, thanks largely to the aid of the new environment, to stimulate the plant to such unwonted vigor of growth that the descendant of a plant which came to California with a pencil-sized stalk now pro- duced a stalk comparable rather to a broom- handle, lifting its leaves several feet into the air, and fully meriting the name of Giant Winter Rhu- barb. Environment Versus Heredity Here again, obviously, we are given a striking illustration of the power of environment to bring out concealed hereditary potentialities. We dare not suggest that environment has introduced new traits that did not exist in the hereditary mechan- ism of the plant. To suggest this would be to im- ply that environment may transform an organism in a single generation in a way so radical as to bid defiance to specific bounds; making the se- quence of evolution a haphazard performance which we cannot believe compatible with the or- derly progress of nature. We are bound to believe, then, that when we see a plant transformed as to its tangible proper- ties in a single generation, or in a few generations, through the influence of changed environment, [6 ]
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