

2 BRITISH FERNS 
this difference of yield at home and that abroad, and one which our . 
own experience abroad tends to support to some extent, is that it is 
largely due to the fact that for more than half a century a continued 
coterie of gentlemen and some ladies, stimulated at the outset 
by successes in the first half of the nineteenth century, have made 
here a hobby of searching for abnormal forms among the common 
Ferns, while some of them have devoted themselves not only to 
such search and subsequent selective cultivation through the 
spores so obtained, but also to keeping up clear records of the 
discoveries, and even depicting them by nature prints. In this 
connection it is due to the labours of the late Colonel Jones, of 
Clifton, who prepared some 300 beautifully executed prints from 
the fronds themselves, that with the kind permission of his daughter, 
Miss Jones, we are enabled to enrich this volume by a selection, 
as an appendix, of about a hundred of the most striking forms, 
adhering almost entirely to the wild finds. The value of this selection 
is enhanced by the addition of Colonel Jones’s contemporary notes, 
which will be of extreme interest to all students of our indigenous 
plants. It will need but a glance through these to appreciate 
the inventive power of Nature and the diversity of form which 
one and the same species is capable of assuming at her magical 
touch. Why this should happen is utterly unknown to us. Theories 
have been put forward that “sports” indicate a sympathetic 
response to environmental influences, but no observant Е ern-hunter 
can agree to this, as the widest variations may be, and often are, 
found associated with the common forms, their roots and fronds 
intermingling, so that the environment is identical. Widely different 
forms, dwarf and congested, robust and lax, may be found on the 
same hillside, with the same aspect, soil, and general environment, 
so that the inducing cause of the change must be sought elsewhere, 
and so far has entirely baffled research. It is clear, too, from the 
character of such environments, that the “ sports " cannot possibly 
be imputed to any change of conditions, another untenable theory. 
The theory, too, that the number of wild finds may be partly 
due to escaped spores from the collections dotted about the country 
must also be rejected, since not only have the great majority been 
found in localities far distant from such collections, but as a rule 
there are individual distinctions in wild *' sports " which differen- 
tiate them from each other, and therefore from the progeny of 
the collected plants. In one instance, in the writer's experience, 
he visited a wood in the Lake District in which spores from a 
collection had been artificially introduced ; several varieties were 
discovered, but all were distinctly referable to known forms in 
cultivation, which is practically never the case with wild finds. 
Spores, too, despite their minuteness, are solid, heavy bodies, unlike 
the much minuter, ubiquitous ones of the fungi. Hence they are 
little likely to travel far afield, and so mislead the hunter. 



