536 MR. KE. J. LOWE ON SCOLOPENDRIUM VULGARE. 
retaining only the pinnatifid one and the little plant I have 
mentioned. This plant when sent to me was represented by 
two or three small roundish fronds which seemed to be 
developed independently from an attached prothalloid mass 
which I did not disturb for fear of destroying the plant itself. 
I could then detect no normal axis of growth such as is seen as 
a small white caudix in seedling Scolopendriums. The fronds, 
however, grew though slowly, and after a time another rose, 
evidently circinate, and from the midst of the clump, and this 
being followed by two others demonstrated to me by the angle 
of their growth that a true axis existed, though still the 
characteristic whitish scales were and are absent. These 
fronds, however, present no sign of that rapidly increasing 
size which distinguishes normally developed Hart’s-tongue, 
and all the fronds are so small that a sixpence would cover the 
entire plant. This smallness consequently necessitates the use 
of alens for examination, and with this it is seen that each 
frond is bluntly lobed at its termination, and bears a distinct 
sinus, associated as before described with a cushion bearing 
archegonia, antheridia, and incipient root-hairs on its under 
surface. We have here consequently a position as nearly as 
possible intermediate between sporophore and oophore, the 
sporophoric character distinctly existing in the shape of a 
circle of stalked fronds generated spirally from a regular axis 
of growth, while the oophoric character as distinctly appears 
in the fact that these fronds are practically stalked prothall 
bearing the sexual apparatus proper to them. 
Your plants, it is manifest from the fronds sent me, are 
much more vigorous than mine, the fronds of which are 
certainly barely half an inch high, and it is also clear from the 
diversity shown in the two classes of fronds described that 
there is considerable variation in form. As regards the genesis 
of these ferns I cannot, of course, give an opinion, but I am 
inclined to think that the phenomenon has not been induced 
by division but that some one prothallus has sported, and by 
lending itself so easily to propagation by division has yielded 
you the batch you possess.* 
* In confirmation of the opinion I have formed as regards being 
produced by division and subdivision, all these have produced these singular 
properties, but in the hundreds of examples of simple division it has never 
deen produced.— FE. J. L. 
