98 ABOUT A FERN. [CHAP. 
desires to know more of her productions than those 
she flaunts in our face, every inch of ground is teem- 
ing with wonders. Thus, to the average Londoner, 
a quiet village in close proximity to woods and hills 
is bearable for a few days only, when it becomes “an 
awful bore;” but to the lover of Nature the few 
weeks spent here will be reckoned by him as among 
the brightest and happiest episodes in his year’s 
experiences. 
But we have been wandering from our fern, which 
in the heading to this chapter we have promised to 
say something about. To start fair it will be as well 
for us to find out what a fern is. We consult a dic- 
tionary, and there find, ‘‘ FERN, a flowerless plant.” 
Yes, ferns never produce flowers, and consequently . 
produce no seeds. But we fancy we hear our readers 
exclaim: “Oh! come now, that can’t be right! Why, 
we've ‘seen them, all along under the leaf in little 
black patches.” Thank you, gentle reader, for the 
correction, but unfortunately for its correctness, no 
seed can be produced, except as the result of a 
flower performing certain functions fully described in 
Chapter III. What you have seen are not seeds, but 
spores—something very different. If you will take 
some seed, say a bean for instance, 
c and carefully peel off the skin, you 
will find it contains a tiny plant 
folded up carefully. These two 
halves of the seed are really a 
couple of very corpulent leaves, dis- 
tended with starch for the nourishment of the juvenile 
bean-plant. That little conical shoot (R) lying outside 
Fic. 94. 
