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an extent that several thousand plants have been found in 

 the wild state which differ to a greater or less degree from 

 their associates of the same species. Among these, 

 naturally, the degree and nature of the difference observed 

 vary greatly, but, from the biological point of view, any 

 marked structural difference from the parental form which 

 is transmissible by spores is equally wonderful and 

 mysterious. In view, however, of the great number 

 of such variations which have been discovered and 

 accumulated, we have become in these latter days so 

 exacting in our demands for beauty and symmetry and a 

 thoroughbred character in every way, that a very large 

 number of the older forms have dropped out of cultivation 

 owing to defects, although when the "finds" were 

 but few in the infancy of the cult, they were regarded 

 as prizes, and christened as such under the names 

 of *' depauperatum," " irregulare," " interruptum," etc., etc. 

 In time it transpired that when the spores of a con- 

 stant "sport" w^ere sown, not only did they, as a rule, 

 reproduce the new type, but that they did so very 

 often in different degrees, some reverting more or less to 

 the normal, while others showed the new character on still 

 more marked lines, constituting an improvement from the 

 selective cultivator's point of view. Such improved plants 

 being grown on in their turn produced spores with the 

 same faculty, and thus in a few generations offspring 

 were obtained which it was difficult to impute to the 

 possibly comparatively feebly characterised wild ancestral 

 " sport." Cases also presented themselves of such striking 

 advances in the direct offspring of only a fairly distinct 

 sport as to arouse great doubt in the mind of the raisers 

 as to the correctness of the presumed parentage until 

 another sowing confirmed it. This was the case with 

 the wonderful Jones and Fox plumose soft Shield Ferns, 

 which arose in a batch of sporelings raised from a merely 

 decomposite wild find. It should, however, be remarked 



