98 ABOUT A FERN. [CHAP. 



desires to know more of her productions than those 

 she flaunts in our face, every inch of ground is teem- 

 ing with wonders. Thus, to the average Londoner, 

 a quiet village in close proximity to woods and hills 

 is bearable for a few days only, when it becomes " an 

 awful bore;" but to the lover of Nature the few 

 weeks spent here will be reckoned by him as among 

 the brightest and happiest episodes in his year's 

 experiences. 



But we have been wandering from our fern, which 

 in the heading to this chapter we have promised to 

 say something about. To start fair it will be as well 

 for us to find out what a fern is. We consult a dic- 

 tionary, and there find, " FERN, a flowerless plant'' 

 Yes, ferns never produce flowers, and consequently 

 produce no seeds. But we fancy we hear our readers 

 exclaim : " Oh ! come now, that can't be right ! Why, 

 we've seen them, all along under the leaf in little 

 black patches." Thank you, gentle reader, for the 

 correction, but unfortunately for its correctness, no 

 seed can be produced, except as the result of a 

 flower performing certain functions fully described in 

 Chapter III. What you have seen are not seeds, but 

 spores something very different. If you will take 

 some seed, say a bean for instance, 

 and carefully peel off the skin, you 

 will find it contains a tiny plant 

 folded up carefully. These two 

 halves of the seed are really a 

 couple of very corpulent leaves, dis- 

 tended with starch for the nourishment of the juvenile 

 bean-plant. That little conical shoot (R) lying outside 



