Improvements Made in Plants by Man 435 



flowers than before, a larger proportion of red like the parents, 

 and perhaps a still redder strain, though again this may not 

 appear for a number of generations. Thus, gradually, generation 

 after generation, the quality of redness becomes extended and 

 intensified, while whiteness diminishes to final disappearance; so 

 that finally a permanently red-flowering race has been secured. 

 Whether, however, this process depends chiefly upon the selection 

 and accumulation of red variations in the Darwinian sense, or 

 upon the isolation of successively-appearing new biotypes, I do 

 not know, but expect the near future to decide. 



In any case, the improvement of plants by the selection of 

 variations is a slow process, and it is fortunate that a far more 

 rapid, even though rather spasmodic method exists, viz., the 

 preservation of sports. 



2. The Preservation of Sports. The most of my readers, I fancy, 

 know something about sports among plants. The most typical 

 ones originate like this. On some ordinary plant a single bud, 

 differing visibly in no wise from its neighbors, grows out to a 

 branch which bears leaves, fruits or flowers conspicuously dif- 

 ferent from all others on that plant. About five years ago, in 

 a greenhouse where I teach, a certain Pompon Chrysanthemum 

 bearing pretty pink flowers put forth a single branch on which 

 all of the flowers were entirely different, being a striking bronze 

 brown. For that season the plant was a wonder to visitors, who 

 delighted to represent that they could hardly believe their eye- 

 sight; a pride to the students, who accepted its appearance as a 

 delicate compliment to themselves; and a treasure to me, who 

 made the best of this unusual educational opportunity. From 

 both the sporting and the ordinary branches we took cuttings, 

 and from these the next season we grew two plants of the re- 

 spective colors, which we have propagated continuously to this 

 day. On an ordinary green beech tree in Scotland somewhat 

 less than a century ago, a single one of the innumerable buds 

 grew into a branch on which every leaf was dark red. That 



