The Sporing of the Fern 249 



compass, and is very pale and tiny, but even a 

 pocket-lens will show that it has a leaf, or two, as 

 the case may be, a little stem, and at the end of 

 this a knob, whence the first roots will spring. 



And this little plant, in due time, will grow into 

 the exact likeness of the parent-plant from which 

 it sprang. 



Judged by their exteriors, the little spores which 

 dust the edges or dot the backs of fern-leaves are 

 more elaborate than seeds, for the fern-spore has 

 always two coats, and sometimes three, and the 

 outermost coat is often as daintily wrought as if 

 a fairy carver had expended his best skill upon it. 

 But inside careful investigation with the most pow- 

 erful of microscopes finds only a minute drop of 

 jelly, containing a little starch, some oil, and many 

 tiny floating grains of chlorophyll. No germ is 

 contained within the spore of any cryptogam. 



But the jelly, or protoplasm, in the spore is in- 

 stinct with creative life. When growth begins, the 

 outer coat of the spore breaks irregularly, and the 

 inner coat, with part of its contents,, protrudes 

 through the fissure, forming a knob, which is soon 

 cut off from the rest of the spore by a transverse 

 wall. This outgrowth contains little or no chlor- 

 ophyll, and it lengthens rapidly, plunges downward 



