ONOCLEA SENSIBILIS. 

 SENSITIVE FERN. 



NATURAL ORDER, FILICES; 



Onoclea SENSIBILIS, Liiinasus. — Sterile fronds oblong-triangukr; pinnre lanceolate, — the lowfer 

 ones distinct, pinnatifid-dentate,— -the upper confluent, repand-dentate, or entire. Sterile 

 frond six to fifteen inches long, and five to twelve inches wide at the base; lower pinnce 

 three to six inches long; stipe six to ten inches long, slender, angular, naked. Fertile 

 fronds four to eight or ten inches long ; pinn:s one to three inches long, nearly erect ; pin- 

 nules triangular-globose, smoothish, dark brown, resembling berries in two-rowed unilat- 

 eral spikes; stipes eight to twelve inches long, rather stout, terete, naked. (Darlington's 

 Flora Cestrica. See also Gray's Flora of the N'orihern United States, Chapman's Flora 

 of the Southern United States, Wood's Class- Book of Botany, and Williamson's Ferns of 

 Kentucky.) 



OST intelligent persons know that according to the mod- 

 ern discoveries in geology, plants existed on the earth 

 ages before man made his appearance thereon ; and that in 

 regard to the plants themselves, numerous races have lived 

 and died of which we know nothing now beyond a few traces 

 here and there of a few species which have been preserved to us 

 in the shape of fossil remains. As to the manner of the appear- 

 ance and disappearance of these races, as the ages followed each 

 other in due course, there are differences of opinion. Some 

 believe that the newer forms have been evolved from the oldef 

 ones by slow and almost imperceptible degrees. We find, in 

 our time, by closely watching seedling plants, that no two are 

 exact reproductions of their parents, or exacdy like each other ; 

 and if we are not disposed to think that these variations revolve 

 in a circle, but are continuously in a direct line, it will not be dif- 

 ficult to believe that the accumulation of small differences may 

 in time present a structure very different from what we may 

 imagine the first parent to have been. In this way those who 



U7) 



