2 BRITISH FERNS 



this difference of yield at home and that abroad, and one which our 

 own experience abroad tends to support to some extent, is that it is 

 largely due to the fact that for more than half a century a continued 

 coterie of gentlemen and some ladies, stimulated at the outset 

 by successes in the first half of the nineteenth century, have made 

 here a hobby of searching for abnormal forms among the common 

 Ferns, while some of them have devoted themselves not only to 

 such search and subsequent selective cultivation through the 

 spores so obtained, but also to keeping up clear records of the 

 discoveries, and even depicting them by nature prints. In this 

 connection it is due to the labours of the late Colonel Jones, of 

 Clifton, who prepared some 300 beautifully executed prints from 

 the fronds themselves, that with the kind permission of his daughter, 

 Miss Jones, we are enabled to enrich this volume by a selection, 

 as an appendix, of about a hundred of the most striking forms, 

 adhering almost entirely to the wild finds. The value of this selection 

 is enhanced by the addition of Colonel Jones's contemporary notes, 

 which will be of extreme interest to all students of our indigenous 

 plants. It will need but a glance through these to appreciate 

 the inventive power of Nature and the diversity of form which 

 one and the same species is capable of assuming at her magical 

 touch. Why this should happen is utterly unknown to us. Theories 

 have been put forward that " sports " indicate a sympathetic 

 response to environmental influences, but no observant Fern-hunter 

 can agree to this, as the widest variations may be, and often are, 

 found associated with the common forms, their roots and fronds 

 intermingling, so that the environment is identical. Widely different 

 forms, dwarf and congested, robust and lax, may be found on the 

 same hillside, with the same aspect, soil, and general environment, 

 so that the inducing cause of the change must be sought elsewhere, 

 and so far has entirely baffled research. It is clear, too, from the 

 character of such environments, that the " sports " cannot possibly 

 be imputed to any change of conditions, another untenable theory. 

 The theory, too, that the number of wild finds may be partly 

 due to escaped spores from the collections dotted about the country 

 must also be rejected, since not only have the great majority been 

 found in localities far distant from such collections, but as a rule 

 there are individual distinctions in wild " sports " which differen- 

 tiate them from each other, and therefore from the progeny of 

 the collected plants. In one instance, in the writer's experience, 

 he visited a wood in the Lake District in which spores from a 

 collection had been artificially introduced ; several varieties were 

 discovered, but all were distinctly referable to known forms in 

 cultivation, which is practically never the case with wild finds. 

 Spores, too, despite their minuteness, are solid, heavy bodies, unlike 

 the much minuter, ubiquitous ones of the fungi. Hence they are 

 little likely to travel far afield, and so mislead the hunter. 



