The assertion that the sundry varieties of forage-beets are not the
result of artificial selection, [72] is supported in a large measure by
the historic fact that the most of them are far older than the method of
conscious selection of plants itself. This method is due to Louis
Vilmorin and dates from the middle of the last century. But in the
sixteenth century most of our present varieties of beets were already in
cultivation. Caspar Bauhin gives a list of the beets of his time and it
is not difficult to recognize in it a large series of subspecies and
varieties and even of special forms, which are still cultivated. A more
complete list was published towards the close of the same century by
Olivier de Serres in his world-renowned "Theatre d'Agriculture" (Paris,
1600).
The red forage-beets which are now cultivated on so large a scale, had
been introduced from Italy into France only a short time before.
From this historic evidence, the period during which the beets were
cultivated from the time of the Romans or perhaps much later, up to the
time of Bauhin and De Serres, would seem far too short for the
production by the unguided selection of man of all the now existing
types. On the other hand, the parallelism between the characters of some
wild and some cultivated varieties goes to make it very probable that
other varieties have been found in the same way, some in this country
and others in that, [73] and have been taken into cultivation
separately.
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