Excerpt from Cross-Breeding and Hybridizing: The Philosophy of the Crossing of Plants, Considered With Reference to Their Improvement Under Cultivation; With a Brief Bibliography of the Subject Let me say, further, that crossing alone can accomplish comparatively little. The chief power in the evolution or progression of plants appears to be selec tion, or, as Darwin puts it, the law of preservation of favorable individual differences and variations, and the destruction of those which are injurious. Selection is the force which augments, develops and fixes types. Man must not only practice a judicious selection of parents from which the cross is to come, which is in reality but the exercise of a choice, but he must constantly select the best from among the crosses in order to maintain a high degree of usefulness and to make any advancement; and it sometimes happens that the selection is much more important to the cultivator than the crossing I do not wish to discourage the crossing of plants, but I do desire to dispell the charm which too often hangs about it. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.