52 FOOTNOTES FROM 



hot-houses, and in the pots and tubs. It adheres closely 

 to rocks, which it sometimes completely covers with its 

 imbricated fronds, by the numerous white downy radicles 

 with which the under-surface is covered. Its fronds are 

 flat, about three inches long, and from half-an-inch to 

 an inch wide, and are variously divided into obtuse lobes. 

 Their texture is membranaceous and strikingly cellular. 

 Their upper surface is most beautifully reticulated and 

 covered with numerous minute lozenge- like scales, with 

 a little dot-like pore or puncture in the centre, analogous 

 to the stomates or breathing-pores of flowering plants. 

 The fructification is very singular, resembling a forest 

 of little mushrooms rising from the leaves ; each dividing 

 at the top into eight or ten green rays, and having as 

 many little brown purses placed alternately between 

 them. Each of these purses has a valve which opens 

 generally in July, and contains within it four or five 

 florets, from the centre of which rises a single funnel- 

 shaped filament, covered with a yellow powder affixed to 

 the elaters or elastic spiral hairs previously alluded to. 

 Besides this ordinary male and female stalked receptacle, 

 sterile as well as fertile individuals are provided at all 

 seasons of the year with cup-like bodies, growing on 

 various parts of the upper surface of the frond, always 

 on the mid-rib, and of the same texture as the frond 

 itself. These bodies seem to indicate an approach to 

 the calyx and corolla of the flowering plants. They con- 

 tain in their interior several lentil-shaped membranaceous 

 bodies of a reticulated structure, equivalent to buds, which 

 frequently throw out rootlets before leaving their recep- 

 tacles, and striking root on the spots where they happen 



