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■"finds" and the common specific type. Even that 

 extraordinary Athyrium, A.f.f. VictoricBy with its dupli- 

 cate tasselled subdivisions set on at right angles to 

 each other, has never been found again, although its 

 offspring through its spores show the new type invari- 

 ably. Nevertheless, the Fern as found was a long estab- 

 lished plant with several crowns, and must have scattered 

 hundreds, or even thousands of millions of spores before 

 it was removed and yet no replica has turned up in its 

 locality, though it has been searched assiduously over and 

 over again. The only approach to it was found by the 

 writer away in Devonshire in the shape of a merely 

 cruciate but not crested form, with a tendency to furcation 

 at the tips. That wild " sports," however, could produce, 

 under wild conditions, secondary sports in which their 

 character has been greatly enhanced, is proved by the 

 case of Scol. v. sa^ittato-lobatwii found in Cornwall. This 

 is merely one of the innumerable " lobatum " forms in 

 which the frond tips are divided into several, plus, in this 

 instance, the extension of this dividing tendency to the 

 two lobes at the frond base, which were lengthened and 

 forked to match but on merely fanned lines. The spores 

 on the fronds, taken, be it noted, from the fern when 

 found, and which, therefore, had received no cultural 

 stimulus whatever, yielded in the hands of the writer a 

 number of plants ranging between quite common Harts- 

 tongues and erratic attempts to imitate the sagittate or 

 barbed arrow type of the parent ; but with these there 

 appeared nine plants, all alike, in which the cresting had 

 been developed into dense corymbose bunches both at 

 the frond terminals and the basal ones. The result was 

 the practical disappearance of the blade-like portion of 

 the frond and the bringing together into a triangular 

 bunch of all three crests, utterly transforming the fern, 

 which was consequently named 5. v. sagittato gvandiceps. 

 This, had it been found wild, would certainly not have 



