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35 
with distilled water until all trace of acid was removed, In this he 
planted mustard seed, which was excluded from the surrounding air 
by placing it in a closed glass vessel. The seed, it would be observed, 
had grown and produced cotyledons, from what he called the innate 
power of growth, 
The size of a seed was immaterial ; for, however small, it con- 
tained within itself material to sustain the plant until it could derive 
-nutriment by the root and plumule. He believed the same held true 
of the spore, and that it was this active innate principle which gave 
rise to the prothallus, 
As from the axis of the cotyledons the plant grew, so always from 
one point on the prothallus the fern grew. It would, therefore, be 
seen that the great point to be determined was the relative position of 
the spore to the seed. The spore he conceived had sufficient innate 
power to start a prothallus, from which, when formed, the future plant 
grew, and not by a generation on the surface of the prothallus. 
Mr. C. P. SmrrH considered the spore simply a cell containing 
plasma, which formed a chain of cells, from which sprang the future 
plant, 
Mr. Wonror thought the accepted generation of ferns so contrary 
to everything else in Nature, that it required more than the mere 
authority of names to be believed, because, by this theory, the sexual 
organs were described as being developed in the earliest, and not, asin 
the rest of Nature, in the highest state of the individual. 
Dr. Dawson wished the members would grow and observe fern 
Spores during the next few weeks, and intimated that he would Soak a 
paper in May, on the fern spore and seed compared. 
The meeting then became a Conversazione, at which 
Mr. C. P. SmitH exhibited Ephemerum serratum with prothallus, 
and germinating spores of Pteris serrulata and funaria, 12 and 21 
days old. 
Mr. Arptey exhibited spores of ferns and elaters of equisetum. 
Mr. Wonror exhibited spores of leaf fungi, ferns, and seaweeds, 
