78 JOURNAL OF THE KOYAL HORTICULTUEAL SOCIETY. 



I may, however, point out that it is obviously absurd to characterise as 

 garden forms varieties most of which have sprung into being, how we 

 know not, on wild moors, in secluded glens, shady lanes, and even by 

 dusty roadsides, devoid entirely of cultural influences, especially since the 

 majority of the finest forms in cultivation have thus originated and many 

 of the rest are their direct descendants, the spores of the wild specimen 

 yielding progeny of a more advanced type in the first generation raised. 

 Examples of these will be shown later on. The richness of the British 

 Isles in these natural sports is evidenced by the fact that more than 1,200 

 wild finds are catalogued as distinct, though we have only some forty odd 

 species and the majority of these have sported sparsely. That these sports 

 are not responses to environmental stimulus or change is obvious from 

 their occurrence on hill and mountain sides and elsewhere where the en- 

 vironment has obviously been unchanged for centuries, to say the least, 

 and from their closely mingled association with innumerable normal 

 forms of their own species which are entirely unmodified, though their 

 environment is absolutely identical. 



Referring now to my lantern slides, the diagrammatic life cycles of 

 ferns shown on the screen, reproduced from Prof. F. 0. Bower's originals, 

 show that among these sportive forms not merely the outward form has 

 been modified, but also, to a very remarkable degree, the life cycle itself, 

 the normal roundabout mode of reproduction through the spore being 

 short-circuited as it were in almost every possible way ; the subsequent 

 discovery by Dr. Lang that the prothallus, or tiny green scale produced 

 from the spore as a preliminary to sexual action and the formation of a 

 seed, could itself produce spores direct, completing the apparent possi- 

 bilities in this direction. The series of slides which follow shows first of 

 all a number of typical wild finds of the contracted, cristate, plumose, 

 and cruciate characters, among the last of which Athyrium filix-fceviiina 

 Victories, shown in detail and here reproduced (fig. 31), is seen to be un- 

 doubtedly the most extraordinary fern sport yet discovered. A.filix-fcemina 

 cristatum Kilrusliense (fig. 32) represents the most extreme type of crista- 

 tion yet found wild ; this was found by myself in a drain cutting at Kilrush, 

 Ireland. The various forms of Polypodmm vulgare exhibited were all wild 

 sports, and afford in each case remarkable examples of sudden deviation 

 from the normal type, coupled with constant reproduction of the varietal 

 form. Fig. 33, P. v. comubiense, elegant is si mum, is one of the more 

 striking and is peculiar in a tendency to partial reversion and the production 

 of three types of frond formation, viz. normally pinnate, quadripinnate, 

 and an intermediate type, portions of all of which may occur in one 

 frond. 



Pteris aquilina cristata, which covers some acres of ground at Fay- 

 gate, Sussex, affords an example of how such sports are occasionally 

 able to establish and extend themselves on specific lines, presumably by 

 ousting the normal. Fig. 34 shows a detached portion of this variety and 

 also portions of two very distinct and dissimilar varieties which were 

 growing in the immediate vicinity accompanied by the normal and a 

 liberal admixture of the cristate form, a curious example of diverse 

 variation under identical environment. Typical forms of ten different 

 species are shown, but had time permitted examples could have been 



