15 
in these, is the seed. Hence the reproduction, as shewn in the 
two great divisions of plants, may be thus summed up: 
In Flowering Plants. In Non-Flowering Plants. 
A separable cell is formed. ‘‘ Pollen,” A separable cell becomes the future 
which is sown in the Pistil, and pro- | Plant, without mediate gestation— 
duces the embryo of a plant, “Seed,” | warmth, moisture, and surrounding 
corresponding with the higher orders | media—thus analogous to the produc- 
of animal life, in which the egg is | tion of animals from eggs. 
hatched in the parent. : 
Now it is to the non-flowering plants that the Ferns belong, and 
inasmuch as they have leafy appendages, whilst the Fungi have 
not; we hence form two groups of non-flowering plants, or, 
ACOTYLEDONS. 
a. Plants without leaves, sometimes forming a kind of crust or 
Thallus (Thallogens)—Fungi, Lichens, &e. 
b. Plants with leaves, whose parts modify to produce spores, 
seed, (Acrogens)—Mosses and Ferns. 
Native Ferns present the following parts :— 
A root, more or less fibrous, sometimes springing from an 
underground stem, Rhizome; this is the true stem of the plant, 
the which, growing upright, constitutes the tree fern of the tropics. 
Leaves (Fronds of the Botanist), consisting of a leaf-stem 
(Stipes), which sending out fibres right and left, covered by ex- 
pansions of the bark, constitutes the green leaf-matter. The 
frond may be entire as in the Hartstongue, simply winged as in 
the common Polypody and Hard Fern, or doubly winged as in the 
Lady Fern ; the first divisions being termed pinne, the smaller 
ones pinnule. 
Fronds of Ferns are distinguished from the leaves of. flowering 
plants, 1st, by an involute method of growth, the young leaf being 
rolled over like a shepherd’s crook or pastoral staff. 
In the compound fronds estivation proceeds as follows :—The 
frond gradually unfolds lengthwise. Then the pinne unroll. The 
pinnule follow, and the more or less divided leaf is exposed to 
view. 
2nd, The ramifications of its woody fibre, forming “ leaf veins,” 
are always in a bifwrcate or fork-veined form. 
Seeds are the result of the gradual separation of a cell destined 
for reproduction, and which are thus produced :—1st, The Capsule, 
which, in some examples, as the Shield Fern, consists of a mem- 
branous case having a row of cells involuted around it, forming a 
spring to liberate the sporules. Or the pinnule are metamor- 
phosed into seed cases, as in the Royal Fern. Bunches of the 
former are called Sori—the cases of the latter Theca. 
The number of seeds produced on a single Fern may be esti- 
mated by the following calculation, arrived at from an examination 
of the Aspidium Filix Mas, Male or Shield Fern. 
