necessary for the same purpose, just in the same fashion as the 

 animals do to build up their skeletons. 



Now the carbon will remain on the earth's surface till some 

 day fire is set to it, which is still another chemical process, and 

 release all that came from the sun in gas. The gas will disap- 

 pear from the earth but all material which was used from the 

 earth for building up the structure of plants will remain as ashes. 



When we look over the earth and see only a few thousand 

 plant and animal families, it means that from the untold num- 

 bers of embryonic life that the sun created through the billions 

 of years only those upon which Nature bestowed the ability 

 to sport have survived. 



SPORTS 



A sport is an individual outgrowth of a variety; in most cases 

 with characteristics so markedly different from the original as 

 to attract attention. It is the nucleus of a new cycle in the variety 

 and may appear as bud, branch or seed, without cross pollination. 



Prior to the acquisition of sex, when the propagation of plant 

 life depended entirely upon the splitting-apart process, any vari- 

 ety which did not produce a sport during its cycle of existence 

 was doomed to extinction. 



These cycles differ in length from a short period in fast-grow- 

 ing ones to a term of a thousands of years in the slow-growing. 



As an example of the first we have the Sagina Supulata which 

 spreads like a carpet on the ground in its moss-like growth. The 

 original color of the plant is dark green, while the sports, which 

 can be discerned easily, appear in light green, yellow and brown. 



In the germ form of animal and plant life where the growth 

 is so rapid that a cycle of life comprises but a half hour we see 

 the most rapid sporting, as in diseases like colds, flu, cholera and 

 typhoid. The cycle of a variety here is composed of a term 

 of from a few months to a few years, so that when they reappear 

 after a certain period they will show different habits and charac- 

 teristics from their progenitors which the new sport has taken on. 



