ARTIFICIAL PRODUCTION OF VARIETIES. 373 



sori, the spore cases were distributed about in patches, 

 without the slightest trace of an indusium, and at- 

 tached by their pedicles to the back of some of the 

 larger bundles of veins, and also in the axils, in scat- 

 tered masses, the indusium having become perfectly 

 obsolete. 



" Another variety, the ' laceratum' of Moore, ('Na- 

 ture-printed Ferns/ 8vo edition, vol. ii., pi. xcii.,) was 

 now selected, having the two characters of venation 

 separate and distinct. The sori from all the reticu- 

 late portions of the leaf were carefully scraped off, and 

 the spores sown in baked peat in a pan by themselves. 

 The plants resulting from these (which were pricked 

 out from a seed-pan four inches in diameter, where 

 they had come up as thick as they could grow) con- 

 tained not a single plant ivhich had not the strongly- 

 marked characteristic of the variety, and some far 

 more crested and crisped than the parent. 



" The spores from the remaining part of the leaf 

 were sown in another pan, at the same time, and have 

 produced an equally abundant crop. There were not 

 a dozen plants of the same character with the preced- 

 ing ; and, until the leaves were several inches long, 

 with the exception of here and there a twin-leaf, there 

 were no external characters in the bulk of them to 

 render their parentage recognisable. A very large 

 proportion of them were discarded as normal; and 

 the only peculiarity at present shown among the re- 

 maining ones, the leaves of which average from six 

 to nine or ten inches in length, and from one and a- 



