96 THE CHRYSANTHEMUM SPORT. 
composed of spreading, flat, canary-yellow ray-florets, and the 
other half was composed of recurved dark golden bronze florets 
with revolute edges. The variety Lizzie Adcock, from which the 
Newlands flower originated, is a bright golden yellow flower. 
The Newlands sport showed a reversion in some of the flowers to 
almost the typical Source d’Or, but more bronzy than that variety, 
but others were more of a canary yellow than the parent, Lizzie 
Adcock. The other flower, which had half of its flower-head 
bronze and the other half canary yellow, had also the bronze 
coloured florets larger, broader, and possessing more substance 
than the others. The cause of these sports is difficult to account 
for, but I dealt incidentally with the subject in a paper I read to 
this society some time ago, and which is to be found in the 
Society’s “ Transactions,’’ Vol. XVII. 
Since writing that paper I have discovered an article dealing 
with the whole question of Chrysanthemum sports in the Journal 
of the Royal Horticultural Society, and contributed by Professor 
Henslow. It is too lengthy to be given here, but after an ex- 
haustive analysis of the various sports, Professor Henslow dis- 
cusses the question of the cause which produced these. In my 
own paper the general conclusion was that anything which tended 
to alter the conditions of growth increased the sporting tendency 
of the plant. Practically, Professor Henslow’s conclusions are 
the same, climatic influences being apparently the most highly 
favoured by that able botanist. He also, however, speaks of 
nutrition as likely to have its effects, and recently some investiga- 
tions made by Sir Sydney H. Vines, and referred to at some length 
in his presidential address to the Linnean Society of London, lead 
one to think that probably it is to the powers of nutrition that 
many variations are due. Popularly described, the investiga- 
tions of Sir Sydney Vines and others show that plants possess much 
the same digestive secretions as ourselves and other animals, and 
that these are used to convert the stores of proteid they have built 
up, and which would otherwise be insoluble, into the materials 
they require by means of digestion into mobile matter. Probably 
we shall eventually discover how to influence these juices (to use 
a common expression) so as to modify the forms and colours of 
plants in a way hitherto impossible. 
