ASPIDIUM ACROSTICHOIDES. 



CHRISTMAS SHIELD-FERN. 



NATURAL ORDER, FILICES. (rOLYPODIACE^!.) 



AspiDiUM ACROSTICHOIDES. Swartz. — Frond lanceolate (one to two and one half feet high), 

 stalked ; pinna; linear-lanceolate, somewhat scythe-shaped, half-halberd-shaped at the 

 slightly stalked base, serrulate, with appressed bristly teeth ; the fertile (upper) ones con- 

 tracted and smaller, bearing contiguous fruit-dots near the midrib, which are confluent 

 with age, covering the surface. (Gray's Miiniial of tlw Bolaity of the Korlhcni Uitiled 

 States. See also Wood's CUiss-Book of Botany, Chapman's Flora of t/:f Soiil/wrn United 

 States, Williamson's Ferns of Kentucky, and Eaton's Ferns of A'ort/i America.) 



HE earlier botanists regarded the spores of ferns as 

 seeds, and as they had noted that there were flowers 

 prior to seeds in other plants, they supposed that in ferns also 

 these seeds must be produced by some similar, although hidden, 

 flowering process. Hence we have the many allusions to secrecy 

 in connection with ferns in the writings of the authors of by-gone 

 times; and even Linna;us so far recognized this popular impres- 

 sion as to institute the class Cryptogamia, that is to say, a class 

 comprising plants which contract " hidden marriages." Even to 

 the commencement of the present century the manner in which 

 the spores are produced was considered one of the great mys- 

 teries of vegetation. A popular French author of the last cen- 

 tury has the following remarks on this subject : " Up to this day 

 botanists have in vain studied this plant (that is, the fern), which 

 seems to conceal from the most searching examination the secret 

 of its flowers and fruit, confiding to Zephyr alone the invisible 

 germs of its young family. That deity delights in forming of 

 its long tresses the sombre veil concealing the mouth of some 

 cave, where the solitary naiad has slept for ages. Sometimes 



