8i 



NATURE VERSUS CULTURE IN FERN 



VARIATION {continued.) 



Subsequent variation, to which our selective breeders owe 

 so much, and which represents largely cultural variation, 

 is another matter ; since, leaving aside the variation 

 induced by crossing and consequent conflicts between the 

 tendencies of diverse parents, we know that once the normal 

 fetters have been broken, once the little cells have taken, 

 as it were, the initiative of planning, they rarely return to 

 allegiance altogether, and are constantly liable to vary their 

 performance again and again, the watchful eye of the 

 cultivator being ever on the alert to guide them in the 

 wished-for lines by drastic weeding out, or profit by their 

 ingenuity when they strike a perfectly new idea. The 

 original start, however, which can transform plants to the 

 extent which I will now exhibit by pictorial aid, with 

 Nature herself as the artist, is, to all intents and purposes, 

 a " special creation," which the evolutionist leaves, as I 

 think, far too much outside his calculations. (About a 

 hundred Nature Prints of wild finds of most of the British 

 species were here exhibited, with elucidatory remarks, 

 many of the types being of extremely advanced character.*) 



We have now seen what Nature does and is doing in our 

 sylvan nooks and corners where ferns are in their element, 

 and I think you will agree with me that if fern hunting has 

 no other merits, it has, at any rate, led to a very effective 

 study of what wild plants are capable. True it is that 

 among the hunters and finders we cannot catch one true 

 professional botanist. The research began on purely 

 amateur lines, and only amateurs have caught the fever. 

 With these prints and their attached notes before us, how- 

 ever, the evidence becomes acceptable to the veriest 



* One hundred of the best of these are reproduced in the recently 

 pubhshed work, " British Ferns and Their Varieties," see notice on 

 cover . 



