469 



IMPERFECT, OR FLOWERLESS PLANTS. 



Class III.— COKMOGENS. 



CLI.— THE FERN FAMILY. Filices. 



The Ferns are the bijouterie of nature. If flowers are rendered 

 charming by their gaiety of colour, the ferns, while in their forms 

 quite as varied and as graceful, are no less delicate in their tissues and 

 organization, and no less lovely in their tender and perennial verdure. 

 These beautiful and universally-admired plants introduce us to the 

 Jlowerless part of vegetable nature. Everything heretofore described 

 has been distinguished by the possession of a distinct floral or sexual 

 apparatus, — stamens or male essentials, and ovary, or potential seed- 

 pod, with stigma surmounting it, the apparatus being usually protected 

 by a calyx and corolla, or equivalent bracteas ; — now, on the other 

 hand, instead of blossoms with stamens and pistil, there is scarcely 

 ever an)i;hing more of the nature of a flower than a little cup of minute 

 seeds, how developed aod vitalized we cannot discern. Certainly, in 

 many cases, among these " flowerless plants," there is a difierence 

 in the reproductive functions of difierent parts, apparently rendering 

 those parts complementary to one another as seed-producing agents, 

 and thus analogous to stamens and pistils. There can be no doubt, 

 moreover, that in the scheme of vegetable life universally, there is a 

 vigorous two-fold energy similar to that which in the more complex 

 races is played forth by stamens and pistils ; still, in the practical, 

 every-day sense of the word, ferns, mosses, and the other families now 

 about to be described, are Jloiverless. In no case have they anything 

 that can be dissected away, and called calyx, corolla, stamen, or 

 stigma. Generally speaking, the flowerless plants are humble in 

 stature ; many thousand species are microscopic, and consist only of a 

 few cells ; only a portion of them are provided with stem -like and 

 leaf-like organs, and such as they do possess are generally of incom- 

 plete structure. The parts directly concerned in the reproduction of 

 these plants, whatever may be their form, are collectively called the 



