II. 



Horticultural " Sports." 



THE immense variety existing at the present day in the cultivated 

 flowers, fohage plants, fruits, etc., which figure in our horti- 

 cultural shows, while evoking the admiration of the many, is rarely 

 appreciated at its true value as the outcome not only of infinite labour 

 in culture and careful selection, but as largely due to vagaries and 

 freaks of nature quite outside the scope of any known laws. Thus, 

 we see flowers such as tulips, hyacinths, dahlias, and others 

 exhibiting all, or nearly all, the colours of the rainbow in conjunction 

 with most complex variations in the form of the blossoms, all of 

 which have been developed from single-flowered normal wild plants, 

 with one-coloured petals. Now, a large part of this development is 

 undoubtedly due to the careful selection and accumulation, genera- 

 tion after generation, of comparatively small differences which appear 

 in the seedlings, but it is a remarkable fact, of such general 

 occurrence as almost to constitute a law, that when a wild plant is 

 brought under culture and thus subjected to more or less artificial 

 surroundings, it becomes in some way subtly modified, so that not 

 only is its off"spring likely to vary more widely than before, but 

 even individual buds of the plant itself may produce modified 

 foliage, flowers, or fruits capable of being propagated and so 

 forming a new and permanent variety. Probably the most striking 

 instances of this are seen in the origin of Nectarines and their 

 varieties. These have all sprung direct as perfect nectarines from 

 peach trees or peach stones. Old peach trees, after producing 

 peaches only for many years, have produced fruiting branches bear- 

 ing true nectarines, and since nectarine stones in their turn may 

 yield true peaches, it would seem that it is really a case of dimor- 

 phism, akin to the two forms of leaves sometimes seen in plants. 

 This phenomenon has repeatedly occurred in the peach, most of the 

 many varieties of which have been raised from stones, though 

 some have originated by buds, and it is curious that in a few of 

 these cases the fruit has only varied in the direction of being earlier 

 or later in ripening — a feature which is constant. A well-authenti- 

 cated case is recorded of a gooseberry bush being so sportive in its 

 buds that four widely different sorts were produced upon it. Cases 

 of this description, however, bring us to the question of cross-fertili- 



