86 FERN FREAKS. 
twenty feet wide (perhaps more, for I did not ask), they touch- 
ed the walls on either side and the midribs that supported these 
gigantic fronds were as thick as my arm, What must they be in 
their native forests ? 
In one respect ferns certainly emulate the Proteacee, for they dis- 
guise themselves in a remarkable manner, species running off 
into very peculiar varieties, or becoming curiously and abnormal- 
ly developed: and these varieties and monstrosities are all more 
or less permanent in character, and are very often capable of 
being propagated; so that the fern-grower obtains an amazing 
number of varieties, very curious in form, some of them very 
pretty, but generally very troublesome to name; and it is to 
these freaks of nature, these varieties and monstrosities that I 
wish to direct attention, rather than to the distinctive characters 
of the genera and species. 
In a state of nature perhaps there is no tribe of plants less 
given to hybridisation than ferns, for though they produce an 
amazing superabundance of seed (a single frond of the common 
Polypody will produce eleven or twelve millions of spores) it is 
only now and then that they meet with the conditions proper for 
their germination and growth, so that they do not become very 
abundant, and the chances of hybridisation are greatly reduced ; 
but under cultivation, where every necessary condition is present— 
a still and humid atmosphere, a warm temperature and a subdued 
light—the case seems to be quite different; and I was assured at 
the Tatton fernery that hybrid ferns spring up in all directions, 
and that these hybrids are, of conrse, very difficult to refer to the 
proper species. Iam by no means certain, however, that these 
young plants are really hybrids, for seedling ferns differ very 
much indeed from their parents, and mistakes may easily be 
made; but if they should turn out to be veritable hybrids they 
will furnish an incontrovertible proof, not of the presence of 
sexual organs, or something analogous to them, in cryptogamic 
plants, for that is a fact now pretty generally allowed, but that 
the sexual organs are not in a rudimentary condition, but per- 
form the same functions as they do in flowering plants, 
