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MR. E. J. LOWE ON SCOLOPENDRIUM VULGARE. 537 
The large frond you sent me to-day with a young frond 
growing upon it seems of a likely type to spring from the 
batch, but I found no trace of prothalloid growth upon it and 
the young fern upon it is a bulbil pure and simple, which is not 
uncommon in these muricate and irregular varieties.* We now 
come to the consideration of how far this case of apospory, for 
that is what it is, differs from preceding ones, and the chief 
difference I find to consist in its persistence after the axis of 
growth bas been fairly started. In Lastrea pseudo-mas, var. 
cristata, which I exhibited at the Linnean Society in 1892, the 
first fronds bore prothalli in profusion, and these fronds being 
layered, the prothalli developed plants, the first fronds of which 
were simply long-stalked prothalli. In this case, however, the 
third or fourth fronds lose the aposporous character and the 
resulting plants are quite undistinguishable from the ordinary 
DL. pseudo-mas, var. cristata. The case of Scolopendrium, var. 
crispum Drummonde (vide ‘Journ. Linn. Soc.’ (Bot.), xxx 
(1894), p. 281) differs from yours in the fact that although the 
prothalli produced aposporously from its fimbriations are very 
viviparous in themselves (a single tip forming a mass of 
prothalli nearly filling a thimble pot and yielding a number 
of plants) and some of the young fronds are transparent on 
the edges and evidently prothalloid, they, like the adult 
fimbriation, display no signs of sexuality nntil layered. The 
third case which trenches upon yours is that of Athyrinin 
Filiz-femina, var. clarisséma, Bolton, in which the primary 
fronds of the aposporous seedlings are also distinctly prothalloid 
and act like prothalli when pegged down. Your Scolopendriums 
then, it is clear, are distinguished by the persistence of their 
aposporous character and by their capacity for developing 
archegonia and antheridia without being layered, while if 
the large frond in question really sprung from this brood, it 
points to the same temporary character of precocious apospory 
as distinguishes the other cases cited. 
* T should like to add to this that the plant from which this frond was 
taken, although now normal botanically, had the same prothalloid growth 
in a very pronounced manner, although I was too ill at the time to do more 
than look at it whilst in bed. All these fronds have for some time been 
bulb-bearing, and now it is bulbiferous on the stipes below the soil—E. J. L- 
+ ‘Proc. Linn. Soc.’ (1892-93), p. 2. 
