354 Ever-sporting Varieties 



and erect and more or less hairy, and has 

 stouter leaves than other kinds of clover. It 

 has oblong or cylindrical heads with bright 

 crimson flowers, and may be considered as one 

 of the most showy types. As an annual it has 

 some manifest advantages over the perennial 

 species, especially in giving its harvest of hay 

 at other seasons of the vear. 



I found some stray quaternate leaves of this 

 plant some years ago, and tried to win from 

 them, through culture and selection, a race that 

 would be as rich in these anomalies as the red 

 clover. But the utmost care and the most rigid 

 selection, and all the attention I could afford, 

 failed to produce any result. It is now ten 

 years since I commenced this experiment, and 

 more than once I have been willing to give it 

 up. Last year (1903) I cultivated some hun- 

 dreds of selected plants, but though they yielded 

 a few more instances of the desired anomaly 

 than in the beginning, no trace of a truly rich 

 race could be discovered. The experimental 

 evidence of this failure shows at least that strav 

 ^' four-leaves '' may occur, which do not indi- 

 cate the existence of a true " four-" or '' five- 

 leaved " variety. 



This conception seems destined to become of 

 great value in the appreciation of anomalies, as 

 they are usually found, either in the wild state 



