412 Ever-sporting Varieties 



however, is not to be reached easily. It often 

 requires several successive generations grown 

 from seed collected from the most atavistic spec- 

 imens. And even such selected strains are al- 

 ways reverting to the crested type. There is 

 no transgression, no springing over into a 

 purely atavistic form, such as may be supposed 

 to have once been the ancestor of the present 

 cockscomb. The variety includes crests and 

 atavists, and may be perpetuated from both. 

 Obviously every gardener would select the seeds 

 of the brightest crests, but with care the full 

 crests may be recovered, even from the worst 

 reversionists in two or three generations. It is 

 a double race of quite the same constitution as 

 the twisted teasels. 



My second point is a direct proof of this as- 

 sertion, but made with a fasciated variety of a 

 wild species. I took for my experiment the 

 rough hawksbeard. In the summer of 1895 I 

 isolated some atavists of the fifth generation of 

 my race, which, by ordinary selection, gave in 

 the average from 20-40^ of fasciated stems. 

 My isolated atavists bore abundant fruit, and 

 from these I had the next year a set of some 350 

 plants, out of which about 20^ had broadened 

 and linear rosettes. This proportion corre- 

 sponds with the degree of inheritance which is 

 shown in many years by the largest and strong- 



