SPORTS PHYSIOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED. 
The following valuable and interesting paper was 
read before the Massachusetts Horticultural Society by 
Josiah W. Talbot. Esq. The subject was so ably pre¬ 
sented. that it gives us great pleasure to lay it before 
our readers: 
"To call a natural phenomenon a sport is to admit 
our ignorance of the laws by which it was produced. 
%Vhen a branch upon the stock of a Rose, or any other 
plant, produces a blossom essentially different from the 
others, it is called a sport. When in grafting the result 
is different from what we had reason to expect, we call 
it sporting, as when the green-leafed Laburnum was 
budded with the golden, and the shoots below the buds, 
and even those from the roots, were variegated, or when 
the yellow-striped Jessamine was grafted on the white, 
and the smaller-leafed Abutilon on the larger, the varie¬ 
ties thus obtained were called sports. When, in Am¬ 
herst, N. H.. a large Baldwin tree, originally grafted 
near the ground on a Russet stock, threw out a shoot 
twenty feet above the graft, bearing apples tliaT seemed 
io be a cross between the Baldwin and Russet: it was 
called Whiting sport frem the owner. Tradition tells 
us that more than a century ago buds of the Golden 
Sweet and Rhode Island GreeniDg apples being split, 
and the halves united, produced the well-known variety, 
one side of which is sweet and the other sour. This has 
always been called a sport. These arc- a few of a large 
class of phenomena which, appearing to be contrary to 
natural laws, have been called sports, but the teiin is an 
unfortunate one, for Nature never sports: all her laws 
are immutable, and it is only when we cannot compre¬ 
hend them that she appears to sport. Cases like those 
mentioned will never be fully understood until we 
better understand the laws of vegetable physiology. 
•‘The better to learn the origin and understand the 
nature of sports, let us look at a few well-established 
physiological facts. In regard to the circulation of sap, 
nearly.all writers now a dmi t, that the crude sap ascends 
from the roots through the sap-wood to the upper sides 
of the leaves, where it is elaborated by coming into con¬ 
tact with the air, and then passes into the veins on the 
under side of the leaves, to be conducted into the vessels 
on the bark, where it is digested and assimilated on its 
way into the cambium, where it forms the protoplasm 
or life-principle, which circulates to every part of the 
plant. From this protoplasm originates, not only all 
sports, but all growth of plant life. 
“Another class of well-established facts which we 
must understand before we approach the subject of 
sports, relates to the cell structure of plants. All planes 
originate in and are composed of minute cells. Every 
natural plant or tree comes from one parent cell, which 
had the power of multiplying itself and building up the 
whole plant or tree. From every parent cell in a plant 
or tree, whether in root, branch, bud or leaf, may be de¬ 
veloped another branch or tree which will be true to its 
kind No natural plant or tree can of itself alone ever 
change its kind. On this fact depends the permanency 
of varieties. Every cell is formed in the cambium by 
the protoplasm, which is one of the most wonderful 
agents in the world, having an inherent power of motion 
as persistent and independent as the beating of the 
heart, and even more so, for t he protoplasm changes its 
locality and performs various kinds of motions, and 
seems to be endowed with a wisdom to foresee and 
plan, and a skill to execute, the most varied operations. 
It not only forms the cells, but changes their forms to 
make tubes and vessels, woody fibre, bark, buds and 
leaves: secretes the gum. starch, sugar, and all the 
components of plants; produces the most delicate blos¬ 
soms and the most delicious fruits: and, finally, to 
perpetuate its kind, inserts in every fruit a little embryo 
of itself in the well-protected seed. 
“The nucleus of every cell is simply protoplasm, 
which, as scon as the first cell is completed, divides 
itself into two parts, each taking an end of the cell, 
begins a rotary motion, divides the cell wall and forms 
from each half a new cell as perfect as the first, to be 
again divided, and so on, indefinitely. When a suffi¬ 
cient number of cells are formed, one above another, a 
new work commences, with which we are particularly 
interested : the protoplasm in the perpendicular row of 
cells begins to absorb the transverse septa or end walls, 
and, joining the side walls together, forms tubes or sap 
vessels, and then passes eff through the tubes thus 
formed and recommences its work of cell building to 
complete the plant. This last process, which is con¬ 
stantly going on in plant growth, gives the key to the 
origin of sports. The grains of pollen in a blossom are 
independent male cells, which may bo removed from 
one plant to another. In the same blossom are the 
ovules or female cells, which cannot be removed with¬ 
out destroying them. These male and female cells are 
not independent parent cells; that is, they cannot by 
division form other cells. Separately they can do 
nothing toward building up the tree, but soon perish. 
But bring the pollen or male cell in contact with the 
ovule or female cell, and they at once absorb the cell 
wall between them, unite their contents, and together 
form a new cell, which is the embryo or parent cell of a 
new plant. In this way every seed is formed by the 
union of the contents of two cells, and here we may see 
how no plant can of itself ever change its kind. If the 
pollen or male cell uniting with the female cell be of 
the same kind, then the embryo or seed cell must be the 
same, and the plant will be the same ; but let them be 
of different varieties, and though they will unite in the 
same way, the embryo or seed cell will be unlike cither. 
It will be a mixed or hybrid cell, aud the plant coming 
from it will be like it. Thus we see that all hybrids aud 
crosses come from the union of the contents of two 
cells. 
“When two cells thus unite, each contains a nucleus 
which appears to be little more than a small collections 
of protoplasm. But what gives this little particle of 
protoplasm in the male cell the power to produce such 
different results when uniting with female cells of 
different varieties? In other words, what determines 
the kind of the embryo cell thus formed ? In a natural 
tree, isolated from all others, every seed or embryo cell 
will be true to its kind, but in a grafted tree, bearing 
several kinds of fruit, perhaps no two seeds will produce 
