i8 



has there been a family likeness to previous finds as in the 

 case above cited. I doubt, furthermore, very much if fern 

 spores travel very far from their place of origin, except 

 perhaps by water agency. The spores, small though they 

 be, are dense and heavy, and though countless millions 

 may be annually shed, very few indeed reach the stage of 

 lern production, while many varieties, though fertile and 

 constant in their progeny, certainly are not so robust as 

 the normals, and would consequently be greatly handi- 

 capped as strays in their infant stages. This is furthermore 

 evidenced by rarity of varietal colonies, the finds being 

 generally solitary. For these reasons, therefore, I cannot 

 accept the theory aforesaid, that the number of wild sports 

 has been augmented by " escapes." All experienced fern 

 hunters seek the most remote localities, and it is mainly in 

 such that the " sports " recorded have been discovered. 

 This fact also disposes of the idea that artificial conditions 

 of any kind contribute to variability, or that change of 

 environment underlies it. Many of the most marked 

 forms have originated under conditions which must have 

 been identical for centuries and tens of centuries. They 

 are, moreover, when found, so closely associated or even 

 intermingled with the abundant normals that their actual 

 environment, aerial and terrestrial, is identical, so that it is 

 impossible to conceive a reason why Nature should have, 

 at one stroke, endowed them with such different styles of 

 structure or even different reproductive characters, as in 

 the aposporous ferns, plus the capacity of reproducing 

 themselves as truly and constantly as any species does. 



PERSONAL FERN FINDS. 



As, apart from the supreme incentive, viz. actual finds 

 of good varieties by himself or herself, nothing tends more 



'■'■'- As many good fern finds have been discovered by ladies, for whom 

 the cult is peculiarly fitted, we should like to impress upon them the 

 fact that when we speak generally of hunters, finders, or raisers, or 

 write 'he" or •' him," as the case may be in the general sense, the fair 

 sex is always by implication included. 



