31 



different character to itself, truncation being in fact the 

 very opposite of cresting. Another curious instance is 

 seen in a very good form of P. angulare, known as P. ang. 

 decomposituui Pcavson. This, when sown from, yields three 

 distinct varieties, viz. the parental, a very beautiful 

 phiinosum {P. ang. pi. Peavson), and an entirely different 

 type, a gvandidens, in which all the segments are shortened 

 and toothed irregularly, forming curious yet pretty narrowed 

 fronds with rounded tips, as different as possible from the 

 parent. Col. A. W. Jones, one of our most noted pioneers 

 in the Fern cult, found no less than seventeen separate 

 plants of a beautifully frilled Hartstongue in one lane, all 

 perfectly barren of spores, and these he could only assume 

 as the progeny of some apparently normal plant in the 

 vicinity, which had the innate faculty of producing such 

 progeny. Such innate but entirely hidden faculty must 

 exist in otherwise normal plants in all cases where such 

 perfectly barren forms have been found, as the numerous 

 finds of the cambricum section oi Polypodium vulgavcr' We 

 have now, however, got rather outside our theme of incon- 

 stant ferns, since all these are constant enough, they imply, 

 however, an element of inconstancy in their parents which 

 justifies their mention. Many other cases might be cited, 

 but we have said enough to demonstrate the curious fact 

 that in some occult way tendencies arise in the blood, so 

 to speak, of normal plants, which must have truly repro- 

 duced the normal specific character for ages, and yet, 

 without any appreciable reason, eventually produce off- 

 spring of a very different character, or even individually 

 diverse in character, which then appear as "sports" or 

 "mutations" to gladden the heart and swell the collection 

 of the assiduous Fern-hunter. C. T. D. 



■-"In this connection it is interesting to note that at the Arnside 

 meeting a plant of a semilacerum form of P. vul^are wa-^ exhibited, 

 from which a single perfectly true cambricum frond had arisen in the 

 midst of the mass of rhizome, an indication that the barren plumose 

 varieties may arise by bud-sports instead of by spores. 



