HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF NEW YORK. 



Golden Bedder Coleus which resulted as a sport from Lady Burrill, a 

 variety with harlequin markings of dark red and yellow. It has never 

 reverted. While on the subject of Coleus, I cannot forbear from referring 

 to a marked instance of the occurence, wide apart, of a similar break in 

 this plant. The golden leaved Coleus originated in England and was 

 imported by Peter Henderson. Before the plants arrived, seedlings raised 

 from seed saved on the place from the old dark leaved sorts developed 

 some golden varieties. 



In Prof. Corbett's paper, already quoted from, he says, "Burpee's dwarf 

 lima bean is a good example of a sport where the habit of the plant was 

 markedly changed." This brings us into the realm of seed sports, wider 

 and more complex than the other and I do not mean to explore it to any 

 extent. 



Prof. Bailey is authority for the statement that: "Bud variation and seed 

 variation are one in kind," and again: "I am ready to say that I believe 

 bud variation to be one of the most significant and important phenomena of 

 vegetable life, and that it is due to the same causes, operating in essentially 

 the same way, which underlie all variations in the plant world." Again he 

 observes: "I want to express my conviction that mere sports are rarely 

 useful. Sports no doubt the result of very unusual or complex stimuli or 

 of unwonted refrangibility of the energy of growth, and not having been 

 induced by conditions which act uniformly over a course of time they are 

 likely to be transient." Again: "The vexed questions associated with bad 

 variation are not yet greatly elucidated." Again, "All these conclusions 

 prove the unwisdom of endeavoring to account for the evolution of all the 

 forms of life upon any single hypothesis; and they illustrate with greater 

 emphasis the complexity of even the fundamental forces in the progression 

 of organic nature." Again: "Now this matter of bud variation has been 

 a most puzzling one to all writers upon evolution who have touched upon it. 

 It long ago seemed to me to be inexplicable, but it is no more unintelligible 

 than seminal veriation of plants." These quotations from "The Survival 

 of the Unlike" are introduced to show how contradictory even an eminent 

 authority on the subject can be, at least so it appears to me, a layman. If 

 I understand him at all, it is to the effect that all sports are the result mainly 

 of the conditions under which the subjects are grown; that all variations are 

 of sportive character; that the difference between well cultivated and poorly 

 cultivated plants is a sportive one. 



The average florist and gardener is hardly prepared to accept that view, 

 perhaps the reasoning is too subtle for him to follow. He knows that no 

 cultivation of which he is master can make a poor variety as good as a 

 good one; he knows that sports, as he understands them, are sporadic and 

 many believe that by a careful study of heredity on the part of scientists 

 the law governing sports might be discovered. But to return to the lima 



42 



