188 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Early Chrysanthemums, like many other plants, have a ten- 

 dency to sport, firstly from seed, and secondly as plants. 



Sports from seed all gardeners and growers are familiar with, 

 and are called "rogues " because they do not come like the parents. 

 Many of us have to unlearn as cultivators what we were taught 

 at school, viz., that everything came after its kind, but we find 

 that from seed this is only so in a limited degree. When we come 

 to think of the strange jumps from the parent in Chrysanthe- 

 mums, and that the seed of a poor nearly single light pink sort 

 should produce such a beautiful little double white as the Duchess 

 of Fife, we are astonished. There is no missing link, but a leap 

 at one bound to a plant of a totally different sort. It seems to 

 me that there are some other missing links that will never be 

 found, because they never existed. Although it is not yet quite 

 demonstrated that what we consider living things are by the 

 laws of nature evolved from inorganic matter, it seems most pro- 

 bable that very various species can be evolved from one another 

 if only time and circumstances are long and wide enough. In 

 the case of seedling Chrysanthemums, the progress is not 

 obtained, as in some other plants; bit by bit, a little strain each 

 season selected from among a great number, but apparently 

 mainly by these jumps among the seedlings. When we grow 

 the ordinary trade seed of Chrysanthemums we see a most won- 

 derful variation in the character of the resulting plants, and 

 naturally, when we know no better, ascribe this to the probability 

 that the seed came from mixed plants ; but when we grow the 

 seed of early sorts from separate plants, and mark and grow this 

 seed separately, the resulting plants are astonishing, for out of a 

 hundred plants there are hardly two alike — some are tall, some 

 short, some slender, others stout, while some are late in flower- 

 ing and a less number early ; still, in the seed from a single plant 

 there are a few in which may be detected a family likeness. 



If the seed of the wild English Chrysanthemum (or Ox-eye 

 Daisy) be grown, the seedlings are all exactly alike and like the 

 parent, though I never grew a sufficient number to say that in 

 ten thousand there might not be found some slight variation. 

 There is another thing as regards Chrysanthemum seedlings — the 

 female or petal seeds do not seem to give double flowers as they 

 do in some plants. If the outside seeds in the pods of the com- 

 mon Marigold and the African and French ones only are sown, 



