The Reversion of Domestic Varieties

Many of the most strongly marked domestic varieties could not possibly live in a wild state. In many cases we do not know what the aboriginal stock was, and so could not tell whether or not nearly perfect reversion has ensued. It would be necessary, in order to prevent the effects of intercrossing, that only a single variety should be turned loose in its new home. But as our varieties certainly do occasionally revert, in some of their characters to ancestral forms, it seems to me not improbable that if we could succeed in naturalizing,. during many generations, the several races, for instance, of cabbage, in very poor soil.