FLOWERLESS PLANTS. 61 



circles, that break the otherwise even margin, and 

 remind us of the undulated edges of certain sea-shells. 

 These masses of seed-material, whatever their shape 

 and position, are technically termed the sori, and 

 always spoken of in the plural. A separate one, did 

 we care to remove or isolate it, would be a sorus. 

 Examined with a tolerable microscope, every " sorus " 

 is found to consist of a heap of minute boxes, per- 

 fectly globular in form, and capable of opening into 

 two halves, after the manner of a bivalve, such as the 

 cockle. The opening is not effected, however, by means 

 of a hinge, but by means of an elastic spring, which is 

 curved half way round it while the box is young, but 

 subsequently straightens itself, and forces the box open. 

 The boxes, technically termed the " thecse," contain 

 quantities of golden-colored atoms ; these are shaken 

 out when the " thecse " burst, and of their growth come 

 in due time the new fern-plants. Yet they are not 

 seeds, any more than the sori are flowers ! Ferns are, 

 in respect of their reproduction, elaborately unique. 

 No plants exhibit so truly wonderful an economy ; 

 they make imagination true, alike in their diversity, 

 and in the mysteries of their life ; and it seems but 

 fitting in so strangely-beautiful a race, that they should 

 be contemporaneous nearly with Time, so far as regis- 

 tered by fossils and by living nature. For in the 

 " great stone book " of nature, as the crust of the 

 earth has well been designated, few records of the 



