be found without its cluster of seedling ferns. In the deep lanes, too, where high hedge-banks, with their giant smooth-stemmed beeches, shut out the midday sun, we find them lighting up the gloomy spots. Everywhere, in fact, where there is shade and moisture, there are ferns; and so great has grown the attachment of those who dwell in towns to the ferns that we bring them tenderly home by the roots, and as tenderly and lovingly care for them, bringing the soft rich leaf-mould and peat in which to grow them, carefully shutting out the mid-day sun and giving them copious draughts of water. The lovers and cultivators of ferns in towns may now be numbered by thousands, but of these how many are acquainted with the structure and early life of their charming pets? How many, indeed, know the real character of these plants, their proper position in the vegetable kingdom? Of course, it is not necessary that one should have a botanical training to enable him or her to appreciate the beautiful in Nature; but the botanical training, or a mere rudimentary knowledge of botany, will enable one to discover hidden beauties, and wonders not thought of by the mere superficial observer. Just as in passing along a country lane, through a wood, or over a hillside, your superficial observer sees but the big trees and the hawthorn and blackberry of the hedges, with the masses of stinging nettle and dock in the ditch below, or the tall stately foxgloves rising above the dark clumps of gorse on the hillside. If he mount to the top, he sees nothing but heather and blaeberry and sky and distant landscape; but to the enthusiastic lover of Nature, who G desires to know more of her productions than those she flaunts in our face, every inch of ground is teeming with wonders. Thus, to the average Londoner, a quiet village in close proximity to woods and hills is bearable for a few days only, when it becomes "an awful bore;" but to the lover of Nature the few weeks spent here will be reckoned by him as among the brightest and happiest episodes in his year's experiences. But we have been wandering from our fern, which in the heading to this chapter we have promised to say something about. To start fair it will be as well for us to find out what a fern is. We consult a dictionary, and there find, "FERN, a flowerless plant." Yes, ferns never produce flowers, and consequently produce no seeds. But we fancy we hear our readers. exclaim: "Oh! come now, that can't be right! Why, we've seen them, all along under the leaf in little black patches." Thank you, gentle reader, for the correction, but unfortunately for its correctness, no seed can be produced, except as the result of a flower performing certain functions fully described in Chapter III. What you have seen are not seeds, but spores-something very different. If you will take C C. FIG. 94. P. R b some seed, say a bean for instance, and carefully peel off the skin, you will find it contains a tiny plant folded up carefully. These two halves of the seed are really a couple of very corpulent leaves, dis tended with starch for the nourishment of the juvenile bean-plant. That little conical shoot (R) lying outside their edges is the future root, and the ascending stem (P) with its embryo leaves lies between these two large fleshy leaves, or cotyledons (C, fig. 94), as botanists call them. The seed is therefore a sort of bud containing embryo stem and leaves, but a spore is simply a little cell containing protoplasm, somewhat similar to those simple cells we described in our first chapter. It is impossible in a work like this to go into the scientific details respecting the relative value of a spore and a seed, but broadly it may be stated that a spore is comparable to the pollen grain of a flowering plant. If we take a full-grown frond from a fern-looking out for one which has the under-surface ornamented Ъ C FIG. 95. by these brown or black dots-and shake it over a sheet of white paper, a very large number of tiny brown dots will fall on the paper. Now, if we carefully transfer a few of these to a glass slip and place it under a low power of the microscope, we shall discover these brown dots to be roundish oval cases of a pale brown colour, composed of cells, one row of which has thicker walls than the rest, and thus forms a band round the edge of the case. This case is botanically termed a sporange (fig. 95, b), and the clusters of them are spoken of as sori. They contain the exceedingly minute spores, which are visible to the naked eye merely as a fine dust. When these spores are ripe their increased size exerts such pressure upon the sporange that the elastic ring of cells is ruptured and extended out straight; a transverse split occurs in the sporange, and the spores are scattered by the violence of the rupture (c). We shall in all probability observe this taking place among those under our microscope. Suppose that these spores are scattered in their natural habitat, say upon some damp mossy stone, or hedge-bank in a sheltered spot, where there is thorough moisture. They germinate. First a little tubular process shoots out from the spore (fig. 96, b), and from the under side of that another similar process is developed and becomes the first rootlet. The tubular process from which it was developed divides into cells, which again divide and subdivide, until they form a tiny kidney-shaped green disc which gives off from its under surface very minute fibres which attach it to the soil. This little flat green expansion is known as a prothallus (d). On its under surface it gives rise to the reproductive organs, which are known only by their scientific names. They are of two kinds, and analogous to the stamens and pistil of flowering plants. The first of these is called the antheridia (d, 2), and are found among the rootlets; the second is known as the archegonia (d, 4), and are produced on a thickened |