I lO 



roots, and install the mass intact where plants are wanted. 

 If, however, there be spores, these can be raised very freely 

 in the usual way and speedily make plants, which if 

 transferred to the soil in the early autumn wall soon take 

 possession and make good specimens the following season. 

 For winter transplanting it is advisable to choose some 

 place where the plants are small and stunted rather than 

 where they are robust, since in that case the roots wdll be 

 shorter and fuller of buds within a given space, thus 

 affording a better chance. C. T. D. 



CRBSTING IN FERNS. 



One of the main differences existing between the 

 varietal capacity of Ferns and other foliage plants is the 

 remarkable tendency in the former to develop crests or 

 tassels at the terminals of the fronds and side divisions. 

 A very large number of species of different genera have 

 sported in this direction, while nothing analogous occurs in 

 Flowering plants unless the fasciated forms of the Celosias 

 and Asparagus plnmosiis be accepted as such, which' is hardly 

 admissible except perhaps in the latter case, where it is so 

 closely correlated with a frond-like form of foliage. In the 

 Celosias or Cockscombs, and also in some abnormial forms of 

 other plants, a crest-like form is produced by a multipli- 

 cation of the terminal-growing cells of the main stem, with 

 the result that it broadens laterally into a more or less 

 fan-like growth. This, how'Cver, remains undivided, and it 

 is notew"orthy that this multiplication begins really at the 

 base of the stem, the subsequent widening out being really 

 a multiplication of the normal expansion of the flower 

 spathe. In Ferns, on the other hand, although the tassels 

 are produced by a similar multiplication of the growing 

 points, this, as a rule, commences at a given point sub- 

 sequent to considerable growth on normal lines. The 

 multiplied points also speedily assume independence, thus 

 forming as many separate strands to the tassels, which 



