32 



ANTHEROZOIDS. 



There are few people outside the scientific world, and 

 even among fern cultivators, who know enough of the inner 

 mysteries of Fern reproduction to imagine that on the 

 underside of the little green scale or prothallus, which is the 

 first product of the spore, there are generated an immense 

 number of tiny living bodies, like long-tailed microscopic 

 tadpoles, whose function it is to perform the parts of pollen 

 in flowering plants, and thus contribute to the reproduction 

 of the fern concerned. We are so accustomed to dissociate 

 free locomotion and evidence of will power from plant life, 

 that it is hard to conceive the existence of entities, so like 

 animals as are these wonderful little bodies, and still 

 harder to believe that such minute creatures can possess a 

 will of their own, and determine their movements in 

 response to certain tastes or smells which appeal to them, 

 and yet this is certainly the case. 



So soon as the little scale or prothallus assumes the 

 familiar heart-shape a considerable number of little 

 pimple-like excrescences (antheridia) may be discerned by a 

 lens among the roothairs which anchor it to the soil, and, 

 at the proper period, when the lower surface is bathed in 

 the dew-like moisture which, under congenial conditions 

 is deposited thereupon, these pimples, as we have 

 actually seen for ourselves, burst, and from each one there 

 issues a crowd of extremely tiny organisms consisting of a 

 minute knob, a spirally twisted tail, and several cilia or 

 microscopic hairs, by the motion of which they steer them- 

 selves about in the water aforesaid. Locomotion is thus 

 clearly established, since the water is of course absolutely 

 still, and any movement from place to place must perforce 

 be due entirely to volition or will-power, particularly as 

 they are quite immersed in the w^ater, and not floating on 

 its surface. Furthermore, as regards the direction of this 

 will-power as determined by taste or smell, it has been 

 proved by experimental botanists, that if a tiny portion of 

 malic acid, the same acid as we find in the apple [Pyrus 



