The Sporing of the Fern 247 



men's goods comes never by aid of fern-seed, and 

 only sometimes by bribing or hoodwinking the 

 powers that be. 



And modern science tells us that there is no 

 such thing as fern-seed, for the tiny globular or 

 oval bodies from which flowerless plants are per- 

 petuated are not seeds, but spores. 



The seed, as we have seen, consists generally of 

 two coats, enclosing a tiny plant and a store of 

 food for its sustenance during the first few days 

 of its life above ground. 



But the spore is much simpler in structure. Its 

 morphological equivalent in the flowering-plant is 

 not the ovary, nor even the ovule or young seed 

 within the ovary, but it is a tiny vesicle or cell 

 which formed inside the ovule when the flower first 

 unfolded. 



In the flowering-plant the jelly-like substance of 

 this cell mingles with some of the jelly in the 

 pollen-grain, and after this union is complete the cell 

 begins to grow and shape itself into a tiny plant. 

 This union of the contents of the pollen-grain with 

 the vesicle in the ovule has been understood, though 

 less fully than we understand it to-day, for two 

 centuries or more. Hence, all the plants which 

 bear flowers with stamens and pistils, and so have 



