as to sundry other serials which annually expire, embracinp^ quite as popular, but 

 much less valuable to|)ics. I ref^retted to see that nia<,^azine started, as with 

 yours and Ilovey's Magazine, already in extensive circulation, I felt assured it 

 coulil not pay. You, Mr. Editor, have <riven the ])lain reasons why another 

 elaI)orate horticultural publication cannot Ije sui)ported Jiow in America. We are 

 yet youucT, in the business of rclincd cultivation, in pretty much everything. We 

 are learning slowly, though surely, and when the Jlorticitltnrist has ten or twenty 

 thousand subscribers, it may do to talk about another magazine of the kind some 

 hundreds of miles west or south, or north of you. Meantime, your paper will do; 

 and if it had three contributors where it now has one, it would be all the better, 

 for then would there be a chance for my gossiping to be crowded out, to its 

 readers' profit, I presume. Jeffreys. 



FAMILIAR BOTANY. —HATE FERNS SEXES? 



Our fathers believed that when a fern produced its seed, the little brown grains 



at the back of a fern-leaf were all that 

 nature had provided for the purpose. 

 Linnajus thought so, and so did every- 

 body else till a quick-eyed Polish gentle- 

 man. Count Leszezye-Suminski, found out 

 the mistake. I will not ask you to pro- 

 nounce both the noble naturalist's names, 

 for letters arranged like these are unfami- 

 liar to our English mouths ; but it is 

 proper that so great a discoverer should 

 enjoy such immortality as the Gardeners^ 

 Chronicle can confer. This great event 

 happened in the year 1848, when it was made known to His most gracious 

 Majesty King Frederick William IV. of Prussia. 



The reason, or at least one of the reasons, why nobody saw^ before what Count 

 Suminski saw in 18-48, was that nobody began at the beginning when they studied 

 the nature of ferns. It is indeed to be doubted whether many people, even in 

 this enlightened age, know what the beginning is. Let me endeavor to make 

 this clearer. 



If you look upon the damp ground where ferns shed their seeds, you may find 

 it covered with tiny green scales not very unlike the spots called hearts in a pack 

 of cards, only with a few hairs for roots, sprouting from near the pointed end 

 (see Fig. 1). The easiest place to find them in, is the surface of a garden pot or 

 of an old wall, in a damp and shaded fernery. There they lie flat upon the ground, 

 looking like infant liverworts. They are the beginnings of ferns, as you will 

 presently see. 



Lift carefully one of these bodies and place it under a microscope (one of Smith 

 and Beck's educationals will do), the underside upwards ; you will find that it is 

 a little convex, and on the convexity stand a few very small projections looking 

 like blisters, but of two sorts. One sort has a hole in the end (Fig. 2), the other is 

 something like a netted ball (Fig. 3). They have received various names ; let us 

 call the first a pistiUid, the second an antherid. 



Here we have what are now styled the sexes of ferns. The pistillid is the 

 lady, the antherid is the gentleman ; strange ladies and gentlemen it must be 

 confessed. 



