6o 



sports are usually solitary specimens of their kind, and it 

 therefore needs a special and more assiduous search by 

 practised eyes to discover them. (2) They mostly occur in 

 wild and unfrequented places, where chance discovery is 

 reduced to a minimum. (3) They are usually associated 

 and mixed up with enormous numbers of the normal forms, 

 and these, as already stated in No. i, require the expert's 

 eye to detect them ; and (4) very few people indeed have 

 either the extreme patience or persistence the search 

 demands, coupled with the requisite knowledge to enable 

 them to detect new forms. Cultured plants, on the other 

 hand, are grown under precisely opposite conditions, all 

 favourable to discovery of any sports which may occur. 

 Thus : (i) they are sown and grown in trade hands from 

 beginning to end, by men who are practically experts in 

 discrimination, and profit largely by their discoveries. (2) 

 They are raised without admixture with other species or 

 varieties, and in the process of transplanting, re-potting, 

 and bringing-on generally, are practically inspected in- 

 dividually many times, so that a difference can hardly 

 escape notice ; and finally (3) most important factor of all, 

 cultivated plants are rarely normal ones ; they are them- 

 selves, with few exceptions, the result of selection, i.e. are 

 the offspring of sports, and hence, as is universally known, 

 extremely liable to sport still more. 



From these facts it is seen that the capacity of plants for 

 sporting or varying might be just as great in their wild 

 state as in their cultivated state, and yet the accumulated 

 results might be practically nil in the former case despite their 

 abundance in the latter; the outcome being the belief which 

 generally exists that the variation observed is induced by 

 culture, which leads on to other theories, that it is due to 

 change of environment as well as treatment. For the same 

 reason we find the most eminent botanists classing as 

 "garden varieties" certain ferns of a crested character, 

 like Lasivea pseudo mas cvistata, as if they had been arrived at 

 by cultivation, and until quite recently this idea of the 



