184 



FLOWERLESS PLANTS 



of brown capsules, each about the size of a grain of sand. A 

 lupe or, still more, a microscope will show that the capsules 

 have the form of a biconvex lens, with a ring of thicl^ened cells. 

 If they are gently heated on a dry slide over a spirit-lamp and 

 then quickly observed, we can notice how the ring of marginal 

 cells is suddenly straightened and thus causes rupture of the 

 thinnest point of the ring, and how it recovers its original 

 curved position with a sudden jerk, by which the spores in the 

 capsule are forcibly thrown out. This can only happen in dry 

 weather when the wind can disperse the seeds. The spores are 

 so minute and light that the wind can carry them far and wide 

 to places at a distance from the mother-plant, where they settle 

 and, under favourable circumstance, i. e., at the beginning of 

 the following monsoon, develop into fresh, little plants, which, 

 however, are quite unlike the mother-plant. For they produce 

 no stems and fronds, but have a minute, leaf-like body on which 



the essential organs of 

 reproduction, male and 

 female, grow. If we 

 sow the spores on damp 

 earth and keep them 

 moist and sheltered 

 from direct sunlight, 

 they will germinate, and 

 after a few weeks the 

 surface of the soil will 

 be found covered with 

 small , green, Hat bodies, 

 each of which is an 

 individual little fern, 

 and develops those or- 

 gans of reproduction. 

 It is from the spores 

 resulting from the 

 fertilization of the fe- 

 male organs that the first type of the plant arises. Ferns, 

 therefore, }mss tIirot(f/Ji two successive states, one of them being a 



A 



Vv^. HJ8. — Tlio Huwor-Learing- type (called 

 Protlialliiiin) fif a"Fern. A. Prothallium from the 



lower si(I(3. nr. Female, (in. Male organs, rit. 



Roots, li. Prothallium with a young fern growing 



from a fertilized ovule. /;. First leaf, and lo. root 



of the sj»ore-bearing other type of the plant. 



(About 8 times enlarged.) 



