196 



from thence as well as from the other ipa.r is, taking, of course, 

 every precaution not to mix them, and see what the results will 

 be. I must confess that without such very special precau- 

 tions it is difficult to see how such pure results both ways 

 were attained, since so soon as the spores began to shed 

 those from the crest would be scattered all over the frond, 

 and, though possibly to a less extent, vice-versci, and this, 

 of course, would lead to mixed results. In any case, it is 

 pleasant to find that our French friends find our little 

 " Gazette " of interest, as is evident by this note and the 

 previous one alluded to. C.T.D. 



It is somewhat curious that Messrs. Veitch many years 

 ago, in the early days of the cult, introduced a French 

 Hartstongue, 5. v. Veloisii, on not very dissimilar lines, 

 but whether this is still in existence I am not sure. I had 

 it once, but lost it. 



SELECTIVE CULTURE OF BRITISH FERNS. 



For the amateur horticulturist there is undoubtedly no 

 more entrancing hobby than the selective culture of the 

 varieties of our native Ferns with a view to improvement 

 of type by means of spore sowing, as, happily, we can 

 testify by our own experience. For the first start in this 

 direction we must, of course, begin with a well marked 

 wild variety, a good sport, in the botanical sense, which, 

 as in the colloquial human one, will respond to proper 

 treatment in a handsome and reciprocatively generous 

 fashion. Nature in some way, which, so far no one has 

 succeeded in explaining, appears to endow all her living 

 creations with a faculty of now and again departing from 

 the ancestral conditions of structure and adopting new 

 ones in their stead, and owing doubtless to persistent study 

 of this fact in connection with our few species of British 

 Ferns by a considerable number of experts, and for a very 

 long period, these have been found to obey this law to such 



