lOI 



medium through which the roots can obtam their water 

 supply. Only sufficient soil is therefore requisite to 

 accommodate the root system, which is all the healthier 

 for being aerated, or at any rate capable in itself of keeping 

 up a circulation of water in the soil by pervading it 

 entirely, thus precluding a stagnancy in any part of it 

 which is sure to lead to sourness and root destruction. 

 Under such conditions, vigorously growing Ferns in pots 

 may quite safely stand in saucers full of water, and, indeed, 

 many of my finest specimens are so treated, and grow 

 most vigorously. 



C. T. D. 



FERN FERTILITY. 



Enormous as is the fertility of many flowering plants as 

 regards the number of seeds which a single individual is 

 capable of producing, Ferns far and away eclipse them, 

 and those who make a study of this and by sowing become 

 impressed with the fact that every spore is fully capable, 

 not only of producing a plant, but even in many cases of 

 producing a number, are induced to wonder that the world 

 is not pervaded with them. In one particular instance the 

 writer made a careful computation of the annual crop of a 

 single full-grown Lady Fern, A. f.f. VictovicB. By counting 

 the number of spore heaps on one of the smallest divisions 

 of a frond, then the number of these divisions on a larger 

 one, and so on, finishing with the number of major divi- 

 sions or pinnae and the number of fronds annually pro- 

 duced, he finally multiplied the already large total by the 

 number of spore pods in each heap and the number of 

 spores in each pod, with the astounding result that some- 

 thing like eleveji hundred millions (1,100,000,000) were practi- 

 cally proved to form the annual crop of this one Fern. 

 This crop was naturally shed in the Fernery containing 

 the plant, and consequently under protective conditions 



