COMMENTARY. 43 



chief subdivisions of species. With respect to extreme forms 

 of cultivated plants they do not require to be limited. In 

 many cases they are so numerous, so slight, so uncertain as 

 regards origin, and so often complicated by hybridization, 

 that a regular and satisfactory arrangement cannot be 

 expected. Certain species are sought after by amateurs on 

 account of the infinite variety of their shades, spots, size of 

 petals, etc. Many forms spoken of are ephemeral, or very 

 nearly so. They either pass away of themselves, or because 

 fashion changes. To regulate the nomenclature of these 

 many thousand garden productions, would be as impossible 

 as to classify the stuffs that manufacturers produce and name 

 every year. The words seedling and sport, used in horticulture, 

 have the advantage, first, of being known ; secondly, of de- 

 signating the important fact of their origin ; thirdly, of not 

 being too precise as to the degree of fixity and import- 

 ance of their characters, which are always slight. The 

 words alluded to are easily translated into Latin by satvs 

 and lusus, found in all dictionaries. The English word sport 

 {lusus) can easily be introduced into the French tongue, 

 where it is already more or less known, its shortness, more- 

 over rendering it convenient. Spielart in German corre- 

 sponds to lusus. 



It may be further observed that sports and seedlings 

 sometimes become hereditary, and then take the name of 

 race, or subrace. Sports and seedlings may be crossed, 

 their half-breeds propagated by grafts, cuttings, etc., having 

 all the appearance of sports. There results an almost in- 

 extricable complication, interesting in a physiological point 

 of view, but which cannot possibly be subjected to a regular 

 method of classification. Let us then do what we can to have 

 the chief divisions of cultivated species assimilated to those 

 of spontaneous ones. This would be gaining a great step, 

 in the present state of things ; and one of which horticul- 

 turists would be quite as sensible as botanists. 



15. In the time of Linn^us, some naturalists of great 

 merit blamed, and not without reason, the arbitrary manner 

 in which he changed the names of existing genera. These 



