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apparently spontaneously departed from the parental or 

 specific type, and sometimes to a very extraordinary 

 extent. These usually are capable of transmitting the 

 new features of their progeny, and may also propagate by 

 offsets, so that when discovered as adults, and perhaps old 

 specimens, they maybe associated with their offspring, but 

 these latter generally are very few in number. In sowings 

 of such varieties, it is also a common thing to find still 

 further departures from the specific form, but usually on 

 similar lines; the spscies, however, remains unchanged. 



In the cases I purpose citing the sports have originated 

 in a fashion which gives little or no clue to their origin, as 

 will be seen. Some three or four years ago Mr. George 

 Whit well, of Kendal, made a sowing of Blechnum spicant 

 varieties, and raised a number of plants of that specie?, 

 but among them he found, not one only, but several plants 

 of an extremely dwarf, congested, and ramose form of 

 Lastrea pvopiuqua, all alike and unassociated with others of 

 that species, and these plants are utterly unlike any known 

 variety of L. pvopiuqua. They are only three or four 

 inches high, dark green, extremely dense and hard in 

 texture, and the small fronds branch at one or more 

 points. Mr. Whitwell, whose authority and experience 

 are unimpeachable, has various forms of L. pvopiuqua in his 

 collection, and the possibility of stray spores from them 

 cannot be overlooked ; nevertheless, there is not a form 

 among them to which either he or the writer could impute 

 the parentage, and, as has been said, several plants precisely 

 alike originated simultaneously. 



Another case associated with Blechnum spicant may be 

 cited, viz. Hartley's B. s. cvispissimum, a dwarf, dense form 

 two or three inches high only, which came en masse from a 

 sowing of B. s. stvictum, a long and somewhat narrow form 

 to which the whole batch presents no similarity at all, 

 and, again, is diverse from any known type. I raised a 



