This last [412] however, is not to be reached easily. It often requires
several successive generations grown from seed collected from the most
atavistic specimens. And even such selected strains are always reverting
to the crested type. There is no transgression, no springing over into a
purely atavistic form, such as may be supposed to have once been the
ancestor of the present cockscomb. The variety includes crests and
atavists, and may be perpetuated from both. Obviously every gardener
would select the seeds of the brightest crests, but with care the full
crests may be recovered, even from the worst reversionists in two or
three generations. It is a double race of quite the same constitution as
the twisted teasels.
My second point is a direct proof of this assertion, but made with a
fasciated variety of a wild species. I took for my experiment the rough
hawksbeard. In the summer of 1895 I isolated some atavists of the fifth
generation of my race, which, by ordinary selection, gave in the average
from 20-40% of fasciated stems. My isolated atavists bore abundant
fruit, and from these I had the next year a set of some 350 plants, out
of which about 20% had broadened and linear rosettes. This proportion
corresponds with the degree of inheritance which is shown in many years
by the largest and strongest [413] fasciated stems.
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