286 



spores, but, unlike his predecessors, he obtained no 



parentals, and only about eleven which were not reversions 



more to the annulare type than that of aculeatum, thus 



agreeing somewhat with Messrs. Druery and Green's 



experience so far as reversions were concerned. All these 



eleven, however, extraordinary to state, two in the first 



crop and nine in the second, were of the beautiful and new 



foliose type we figure, and not a single gracillimum nor 



pulcherrimum appeared. This, therefore, constitutes one 



more of those inexplicable varietal phenomena which 



ferns present from time to time, and is, in our opinion^ 



unique in this case, as it is practically one and the same 



parent, which in different hands, but certainly under 



similar culture, has yielded such extremely diverse and 



opposite results, tending in the one case to extremely 



fine dissection and tenuity, and in the other to dense and 



expanded folioseness. 



Chas. T. Druery, V.M.H., F.L.S. 



FERN TASSELS. 



Amongst the innumerable curious features which 

 characterise plant life and enable us to classify it 

 into orders, genera, and species, those appertaining to 

 the tasselling or multiplication of terminal growths in 

 ferns rank with the most curious and inexplicable of alL 

 Ferns, as we know, form but one order out of many, 

 but it would seem that only in this solitary order does this 

 tendency appear to prevail throughout all species without 

 there existing any parallel phenomena in any other. The 

 normal development of a leaf or of a frond is similar, in so 

 far that each one represents an arrangement of stems or 

 stalks and mid-ribs as continuations thereof, such mid-ribs 

 then producing laterally a more or less complicated net- 

 work or system of veins, which form a framework for the 



