36 



may then be washed clean and inserted upright about half 

 an inch in soil, fairly close together in a shallow pan, so 

 that they can be covered with a glass slip. Each base is 

 capable of developing an embryo bud beneath the skin of 

 the outer side.* This embryo bud, under normal circum- 

 stances, only pushes through in a few cases, or not at all, 

 and forms the means by which the lateral offsets are 

 produced. When detached, however, as described, the 

 energy of the fleshy portion is concentrated on the buried 

 bud, which in time breaks through the skin and, emerging 

 as a fairly strong plant, emits its bundle of roots into the 

 soil and establishes itself, partly by virtue of these roots 

 and partly by absorption of the material left in the base. 

 This phenomenon represents one of the many modes in 

 which nature provides for reproduction when the normal 

 axis of growth is damaged or destroyed. Such or similar 

 buds, as we know in the case of the Hartstongue, may be 

 developed without the prior existence of dormant ones, 

 but in the species we treat of, the dormant or lateral bud is 

 really a normal feature, although as a rule the plants only 

 profit by it under more or less abnormal circumstances of 

 damage or check, to which the production of lateral offsets 

 is largely due. C. T. D. 



BOTANISTS AND FERN FANCIERS. 



To the outsider the Fern fancier or specialist is 

 generally regarded as at any rate something of a botanist, 

 and so he must be to the extent of knowing the difference 

 between one species of fern and another, but so soon as he 

 devotes his study to the varietal form of these species, he 

 at once finds a very material gulf between the two classes, 



♦ I distinctly remember seeing in a very old book on Ferns, which 

 untortunately I cannot retrace, an illustration of a section of a base of 

 L. /. mas shewing this bud clearly within, but minus any external 

 evidence, as a constant feature of the species, but on making such a 

 section myself I failed to detect its presence. None the less, three out 

 of thirty, which I have now under culture, have formed external buds, 

 hence this note. — C.T.D. 



