[SUB- 7 b.] A subordinate or minor variety, esp. of a domestic animal or cultivated plant.
1802–12. Bentham, Ration. Judic. Evid. (1827), IV. 536. Men of the class of professional lawyers … being, under all their varieties and sub-varieties, men.
1811. Pinkerton, Petral., Introd. p. ii. Some [writers] have Varieties; and Werner, with a truly German want of taste, has added Sub-species and Sub-varieties.
1822–7. Good, Study Med. (1829), II. 405. Some pathologists have set down Arachnitis as a sub-variety of the meningic form.
1868. Darwin, Anim. & Pl., I. i. 18. There is not sufficient evidence that any of these ancient dogs belonged to the same identical sub-varieties with our present dogs.
1875. E. White, Life in Christ, III. xxiii. (1878), 336. The original distinct kinds of living things, out of which all subvarieties have sprung.
