8 The Significance of Horticultural Varieties. 
yellow or even white leaves or seedlings are by no means 
rare in variegated varieties. But the resemblance is only 
superficial. The green minus variant of the variegated 
type does not belong to the original species, nor the yel- 
low plus variant to the golden variety; as may often be 
seen by sowing the seeds of such extreme types. 
I propose to call such varieties intermediate races, and 
if neither of the two antagonistic characters preponder- 
ates too much over the other, balanced races or ever- 
sporting varieties 1 (see 3). 
If we attempt to make a statistical study and graph- 
ical description of the variability in such intermediate 
forms we must obviously not expect such simple and 
straightforward curves as those which describe the var- 
iability of normal characters (Vol. I, p. 48). In prin- 
ciple we may expect to obtain figures which simultane- 
ously exhibit the two magnitudes that is to say com- 
pound curves such as have been studied by LUDWIG, 
BATESON, PEARSON, DAVENPORT and others. It is evi- 
dent that they will present very different forms according 
to the mutual proportion of the two characters (see be- 
low 3-5). At the same time it is clear that in such 
cases selection may lead to special results which will often 
be due to the impossibility of transgressing the characters 
of the two limiting types (see 5 and Fig. 3). 
The two following generalizations may be derived 
from the facts we have been discussing. 
1. Some horticultural varieties owe their existence to 
a single nezv character. These are usually not more vari- 
able than the original species and as a rule just as con- 
stant from seed. Very frequently the novelty consists 
in the loss or latency of a character of the parent spe- 
1 See Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation, p. 309. 
