294 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 54 



nature students of four hundred years ago I know not who else 

 is so far from accepting things on other people's guess or hearsay as 

 Valerius Cordus ; in whom I have not yet read a line that savors of 

 the fabulous or superstitious; and that, for the period, is much to 

 say of any author. Concerning the propagation of scolopendrium 

 he says: "Phyllitis has no stem, or flower, or seed; nevertheless, 

 from the vermiform patches on the back of the leaf, when these are 

 resolved into powder and are scattered abroad, it is propagated." 1 

 Substantially the same proposition is repeated with emphasis at 

 the end of his description ofAspidium filix mas: "Although it has 

 neither stem nor flowers nor seeds, it nevertheless propagates it- 

 self by means of the yellow and hairy powder that is produced on the 

 back of the leaf and is blown away by the wind." 2 Again, of 

 trichomanes it is said: "It grows copiously on moist shaded rocks, 

 although it produces no stem, or flower or seed. But it reproduces 

 itself by means of the dust that is developed on the back of the 

 leaves, as do all kinds of ferns; and let this statement of the fact 

 once for all suffice." 3 From this point forth he proceeds to 

 describe a half dozen other ferns in close succession, carefully bring- 

 ing out the form and arrangement of their fruit-dots or lines not 

 omitting even the indusium, but not again mentioning their seed- 

 lessness or their means of propagation. 



This positive and reiterated assertion that ferns have no seeds, 

 yet propagate by organs so infinitesimal that he has never seen 

 one, ^ implies that what ferns shed from the back of their fronds is 

 understood to be of a different structure from that of seeds. It is 

 an easy matter for one frequenting the native haunts of certain 

 ferns to see their prothallia both with and without the first diminu- 

 tive fern leaf; and it can not reasonably be doubted indeed 

 Cordus by his strong language compels us to think that he had 

 seen these things, and had assured himself that the germination of 

 ferns is most different from that of seed plants ; thence inferring 

 to a certainty that those particles, invisible except in mass, are 

 things different and distinct from seeds. 



trine of bisexuality in plants. He who knows Tragus' belief in the repro- 

 ductibility of even seed plants apart from any kind of seed or germ, will not 

 very readily accept this latter interpretation of his language. 



iHist. Pi., p. 113. 



J Ibid., p. 169'. 



3 Ibid., p. 170. 



4 The individual spores of ferns were first seen some seventy years after 

 Cordus' demise. 



