■56 



branched and crested ones, such as no fern in our collection 

 resembled, and of so marked a character that it is almost 

 impossible to impute them to the Seaton Junction find, 

 which, if innocent of these, practically produced no progeny 

 at all. Now, two peculiar points about this case are (i) 

 that the Polystichums rarely, we might almost say never, 

 give rise to stray plants among our sowings ; and (2) that 

 the few which did appear behaved alike, with one excep- 

 tion, apparently normal. The possibility has been advanced 

 that they arose from stray Polystichiim spores deposited at 

 Mr. Moly's on the frond of Asp. tvichonianes in question, but 

 so small a portion of that frond was used that such an 

 explanation is hardly feasible, and moreover Mr. Cranfield, 

 who sowed from it, also obtained no such results. The 

 origin, therefore, of these ramo-cvistate Polystichums is an 

 entire mystery, as was also that of the first batch of Lastreas, 

 as being more or less abnormal, they can hardly be imputed 

 to stray spores from adjacent plants in the hedgerow 

 concerned. 



We have sown spores now some hundreds of times, but 

 never had such a puzzling multifold result before. Un- 

 expected things, however, have occurred on several other 

 occasions. In 1900 we received a plant of P. vnlgave 

 servatum from Kew, with deep saw-toothed pinnae, one of 

 which we noticed was irregularly and curiously branched. 

 As this bore spores we sowed it, without result. In 1905, 

 however, we noticed a small seedling P. vulqave in a pot of 

 other spores sown the year previous, and on its primary 

 fronds we discovered prothalli, i.e. apospory, for the first 

 time in that species. We consequently carefully isolated it, 

 brought it on, and lo ! it proved to be an exact replica of 

 the Kew servatum sown so many years previously in another 

 pot entirely. 



Another case. In i838 we sowed together for a cross 

 A, f.i. Kalothvix and A. f.f. Cousensii [Percvistatum), with the 

 result that we obtained the latter form with much elongated 

 pinnules, which we attributed to Kalothrix influence, but 



