Plant Study. 



759 



ried by insects or by wind, and sometimes in the case of aquatic plants, 

 by water. In the case of the ferns it is always carried by water. From 

 the fertilized germ which is developed in one of the long pockets a little 

 fern starts to grow, and from this develops what we know as the fern, 

 although it may be two or three years before it is sufficiently mature 

 to grow large fronds and develop leaves with fruit dots on them. Thus 

 we see that the story of the fern is not unlike that of the butterfly, which 

 has two very distinct lives — that of the caterpillar and that of the winged 

 insect; the one life of the fern being a tiny rounded leaf and the next a 

 beautiful, graceful mass of ferns all springing from a root-stock. 



HOW TO STUDY THE FERNS 



Although the ferns do not belong to the flowering plants yet the way 

 each species develops its fruiting organs affords characters for dis- 

 tinguishing them. There are in most localities in New York State from 

 ten to twenty species of ferns. With a good book any one can learn 

 readily to know these species apart and understand something of the 

 life and characteristics of each. As ferns are easily pressed and are 

 lovely objects wdien they are mounted on white paper, the making of a 

 fern herbarium is a most delightful pastime. Some people interested in 

 ferns have made blue prints of all the species in the neighborhood, thus 

 having an album which is at once beautiful and instructive. The blue 

 prints are made simply by pressing the fern against the ordinary blue 

 print paper and exposing it to the light. 



In the case of those ferns which bear the fruiting organs on the 

 lower side of the leaves the species are dis- 

 tinguished not only by the shape of the 

 fronds or fern leaves, but also by the posi- / 

 tion on the leaf of the fruit dots, and also 

 by the shape of the little membrane which 

 covers the fruit dot, and which is called 

 the indusiuiii. This indusium is round in 

 some species like the Christmas fern (Fig. 

 1.2) ; in some species it is long as in the 

 silvery spleen wort (Fig. 4.2) ; and some- 

 times it is horseshoe shaped as in the ever- 

 green wood fern (Fig. 5) ; and sometimes 



it is cup shaped as in the boulder fern ^]'- ^—)- P'r^<fng leaflet of the 



boulder ]crn enlarged. 2. hruit- 



(Fig. 4.1). In some species the insidium ,-„^ ,,^^,^ ^j spleemvort 

 does not appear but the spore-cases are enlarged. 



