216 Commercial Gardening 



the career of the embryo Fern will be of value when we come to consider 

 a little later on their propagation by the several means at command. 

 Meanwhile, however, as part and parcel of the life-history of the Fern, 

 we think it well to say a few words on those of the past. In the first 

 place, the Ferns, as spore bearers, belong to that great family of plants, 

 similarly characterized, which in the far distant Carboniferous Age formed 

 those forests of immense area which in their fossil state now represent the 

 coal seams upon which so vital a portion of Britain's and indeed the 

 world's prosperity is founded. The mind utterly fails to conceive the 

 immensity of time which lies between that period or periods and the 

 present time. Thousands of feet of superincumbent formations have been 

 piled upon them, each one a page in the history of the world, involving 

 perhaps changes from high land to deep ocean, and, in any case, immensely 

 long periods for their deposition, to say nothing of the intervening pages 

 which have been deleted by erosion. Nevertheless, it is a very remarkable 

 fact that the Ferns of even that far-distant date strongly resemble those of 

 the present, though it is presumably a fact that in the same period prac- 

 tically all the wonderful diversity of fruit and flower has been evolved 

 from plants which at that time were really Ferns or their allies, or had 

 only commenced to be evolved with the true floral character. One fact 

 which had probably contributed to this practical standstill in Fern 

 development is the microscopical character of their inflorescence, which 

 has prevented them from benefiting by that interaction of the insect 

 world which has played so powerful a role in floral evolution. In this 

 connection it is a curious fact that all through the Ferns, whether assuming 

 the size of a magnificent Palm, as in Dicksonia, Cyathea, &c., or that of a 

 minute grass tuft, as Asplenium septentrionale, not only are the spores 

 equally microscopic, but the prothallus is practically indistinguishable, and 

 the fertilization nominally is always self-effected, i.e. by the adjacent 

 antherozoids of the same prothallus, a fact which throughout nature 

 tends rather to degradation than upward evolution. Since Ferns have 

 undoubtedly sprung from the seaweeds which formed the antecedent types 

 of primary vegetation, and yet, as Ferns and allied plants, were so definitely 

 developed in the Coal period, we are necessarily confronted with another 

 inconceivably long period of time precedent even to that; a consideration, 

 however, with which we need not burden our brains, as it is utterly beyond 

 calculation. 



Having studied Ferns in their incipient stages, and also in their past 

 relations, we may now proceed to some practical considerations regarding 

 culture and propagation. To the selective cultivator, and also to the com- 

 mercial raiser of Ferns on a large scale, the raising from spores is prac- 

 tically the main mode. To the selective cultivator, for the reason that 

 when sowing varietal forms there is always a chance of improved seedlings, 

 or, if sowing diverse forms together, crosses of value may result, neither of 

 which advantages attaches to propagation by division or bulbil, while the 

 wholesale raiser obtains thereby a practically illimitable crop only con- 



