regarded as " garden varieties'' proper, and on analysis of 

 the list we find that no less than 1,360, out of a total list of 

 1,717, originated in a wild state, i.e. 1,360 as against 357. 

 In this connection it may be argued that a far greater 

 number of variations may have occurred under culture, 

 but that owing to their inferiority they have not been 

 recorded. This is perfectly true, but is fully counter- 

 balanced by the fact that the record of wild sports is 

 subject to the same observation, since it only embraces 

 what the fern hunter considers to be acquisitions, and 

 ignores a vast number of inferior and defective " sports," 

 which, from the biological point of view, are fully as 

 interesting as the others, and equally affect the question 

 of comparative variability. I have heard it mooted that 

 the immense number of "sports" found in the British 

 Isles, as compared with other parts of world where 

 ferns are plentiful, may be partly due to escaped spores 

 from the various collections scattered about the country, 

 but this idea, for several reasons, cannot be substantiated. 

 Wild sports, as a rule, have an independent individual 

 character of their own, and it is comparatively seldom 

 that more than one of precisely the same type has been 

 separately found, while escaped seedlings are easily 

 recogni/ied as such by the experts. For instance, in 

 a wood near Levens, in the Lake District, the gardener 

 at Levens Hall, Mr. Craig, who was also a fern collector, 

 scattered a great number of spores from abnormal ferns in 

 his collection. Even to the present day, examples crop up 

 in that wood. A few years back I went through it myself 

 and found several, but in every case I could at once name 

 the parent, and even had I not known the fact of the 

 sowing, I should have suspected it from the identity of 

 the types with those I am acquainted with. On the 

 other hand, I have hunted many localities, and found a 

 good many varieties under conditions where strays were 

 practically impossible, on hillsides and in glens, and by 

 the roadsides, and on the moors, Dartmoor and Exmoor, 

 far remote from any known collections, and in no case 



