[309]
D. EVER-SPORTING VARIETIES
LECTURE XI
STRIPED FLOWERS
Terminology is an awkward thing. It is as disagreeable to be compelled
to make new names, as to be constrained to use the old faulty ones.
Different readers may associate different ideas with the same terms, and
unfortunately this is the case with much of the terminology of the
science of heredity and variability. What are species and what are
varieties? How many different conceptions are conveyed by the terms
constancy and variability? We are compelled to use them, but we are not
at all sure that we are rightly understood when we do so.
Gradually new terms arise and make their way. They have a more limited
applicability than the old ones, and are more narrowly circumscribed.
They are not to supplant the older terms, but permit their use in a more
general way.
[310] One of these doubtful terms is the word _sport_. It often means
bud-variation, while in other cases it conveys the same idea as the old
botanical term of mutation. But then all sorts of seemingly sudden
variations are occasionally designated by the same term by one writer or
another, and even accidental anomalies, such as teratological ascidia,
are often said to arise by sports.
If we compare all these different conceptions, we will find that their
most general feature is the suddenness and the rarity of the phenomenon.
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