42 
edulis had the highest rank. In raising both species from seed there 
was no difference whatever between the seedlings during the first 
season. In these young and delicate plants, true leaves were perfectly 
developed; these were flat, linear lanceolate, and of a deep glaucous 
hue. Finns edulis assumed stout, vigorous branches the second year; 
then the true leaves were suppressed, a portion only being adnate 
with the stem, forming a sort of cushion, or as bud-scales, or bracts 
under the scales of the cone, from the axis of which the phyllodes— 
secondary leaves, or bundles of leaves of some authors — spring. In 
Finns nwnophylla only a few branches made phyllodes the second 
year, and, from the seed, he had plants ten years old, which con- 
tinued to bear branches with true leaves almost equally with those 
bearing phyllodia. The monophyllous branches were never as strong 
as those from Finus edulis^ and in ten years a plant of Pinus edulis 
would be double the size of Pinus monophylla. Assuming, as we 
may, that the two had one parentage, we see that the one had less 
vigor of growth; it retained more of its juvenile characteristics, and 
retained them longer than the other; and it never reached the power 
of development that Pinus edulis had attained. We may say, with 
confidence, that Pinus monophylla sprung from the same parentage as 
Pinus edulis, and became permanently different throughout, being 
subjected to conditions unfavorable to a full development. It would 
appear that the soil and climate ot Nevada were not favorable to the 
usual development of Pinus edulis, and hence, through the long 
course of ages, the suppressed features that characterized full matu- 
rity in the original, became, under the law of heredity, permanent ones. 
^ It was not often that we had so clear evidence of the unity of 
origm in two certainly distinct species, and, as supporting the modern 
ideas of evolution, the case was worthy of being placed on record. 
Apospory in Ferns,—^. T. T. Dyer calls attention in Nature to 
a paper by Mr. E. T. Druery (not yet published; as containing a 
report of one of the most interesting botanical observations that 
has been made for some time. 
Mr. Druery's paper relates to a singular mode of reproduction in 
Athyrium Fllix-fcemina, var. clarissifna. In this fern the sporangia do 
not follow their ordinary course of development, but, assuming a more 
vegetative character, develop more or less well-defined prothalha, 
which ultimately bear archegonia and antheridia. From these adven- 
titious prothallia the production of seedling ferns of a new genera- 
tion has been observed to take place in a perfectly normal way. 
Mr. F. O. Bauer has confirmed Mr. Druery's observations and 
obtained from him specimens of another fern {Folystichum angulare, 
y^x. palcherrima) which altogether eclipses the ^//yv/^////, remarkable 
as that is. In the Folystichum the apex of the pinnules grows out 
into an irregular prothallium, upon which was demonstrated the 
existence of characteristic archegonia and antherida. In this case the 
production of the prothallium is not even associated locally with the 
sporangia, but appears as a direct vegetative outgrowth of the normal 
spore-bearing plant. The oophore is a mere vegetative process of 
the sporophore, a suppression of the alternation of the two genera- 
tions which exceeds even that which obtains in the flowering-p'*^"^- 
