PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 243 



tiu^e of the beautiful, whether in nature or art, which tended to soften 

 the asperities of life and render it more tolerable to those with whom 

 it was a continuous round of toil. The local authorities would de- 

 serve well of the town if they enabled those who were confined to a 

 region of smoke and of bricks and mortar, to taste, in the course of 

 their daily avocations, some of those refreshing and pure delights 

 which lead those more happily circumstanced to yearn with an in- 

 describable longing for the " greenwood," and to lavish on the enjoy- 

 ments of a country residence the hard earnings of the counter or the 

 desk — such delights as the bxirsting of the leaves and flowers in spring, 

 the sunlight shining through the green luxuriant foliage of summer, 

 or the glorious hues of the woods in autumn, and even the graceful 

 sweep of branches silvered with the frosts of winter. 



March 23rd. — Microscopical Meeting. Dr. Dawson in the chair. 



Mr. E. Glaisyer announced the receipt of five slides of starches 

 for the cabinet from Mr. Wonfor. 



Dr. Dawson, in introducing his subject for the evenings" Spores" 

 — said he considered the spore of a fern was really a seed, and wished 

 the members to pay a little attention to the determining a point not 

 yet sufficiently made out, viz. " What a spore really was ? " If this 

 were settled it would materially help in unravelling the assumed 

 extraordinary generation of ferns, as held by some authorities. 



A seed contained all that was necessary for the development of the 

 future plant, except air and water. With this idea, he boiled powdered 

 asbestos in fuming nitric acid and then washed it carefully with dis- 

 tilled 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 j)lant 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 grows, so always from 

 one point on the prothallus the fern grows. 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. Smith considered the spore simply a cell containing plasma, 

 which formed a chain of cells, from which sprang the futiire plant. 



Mr. Wonfor 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, 

 as in the rest of nature, in the highest state of the individual. 



Dr. Dawson wished the members to grow and observe fern spores 



