The stronger this
is, and the more favorable circumstances it is placed under, the more
food will be available for the seed, and the healthier will be the
development of the embryo. Only well-nourished plants give
well-nourished seeds, and the qualities of each plant are for this
reason at least, partly dependent on the properties of its parents and
even of its grandparents.
From these considerations the inference is forced upon us that the
apparently hereditary differences, which are observed to exist among the
seeds of a species or a variety and even of a single strain or a single
parent-plant, may for a large part, and perhaps wholly, be the result
[390] of the life-conditions of their parents and grandparents. Within
the race all ssvariability would in this way be reduced to the effects
of external circumstances. Among these nourishment is no doubt the most
momentous, and this to such a degree that older writers designated the
external conditions by the term nourishment. According to Knight
nutrition reigns supreme in the whole realm of variability, the kind of
food and the method of nourishment coming into consideration only in a
secondary way. The amount of useful nutrition is the all-important
factor.
If this is so, and if nutrition decides the degree of deviation of any
given character, the widest deviating individuals are the best nourished
ones.
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