HOW A FERN GROWS 241 



Looking at the ripe fruit-dots on the lower side of the fern leaf, 

 we can easily see with a lens a mass of tiny globules; each one of 

 these is a spore-case, or sporangium (plural sporangia) ^ and is 

 fastened to the leaf by a stalk and has, almost encircling it, a 

 jointed ring. When the spores are ripe, this ring straightens out 

 and ruptures the globules, and out fly the spores. By scraping a 

 little of the brown fuzz from a fruiting pinna of the Christmas fern 

 upon a glass slide and placing a cover glass upon it, we find it very 

 easy to examine through the microscope, and we are able thus to 

 find the spore-cases in all stages, and to see the spores distinctly. 

 The spore-cases may also be seen with a hand lens, the spores 

 seeming then to be mere dust. 



The rootstock of the fern is an humble example of "rising on 

 stepping stones of our dead selves," this being almost literally 

 true of the tree-ferns. The rootstock which is a stem and not a 

 root — has, like other stems, a growing tip from which, each year, 

 it sends up into the world several beautiful green fronds, and 

 ntimerous rootlets down into the earth. These graceful fronds 

 rejoice the world and our eyes for the simimer, and make glad 

 the one who, in winter, loves to wander often in the woods to inquire 

 after the welfare of his many friends during their period of sleeping 

 and waking. These fronds, after giving their message of winter 

 cheer, and after the following summer has made the whole wood- 

 land green and the young fronds are growing thriftily from the tip 

 of the rootstock, die down, and in midsummer we can find the old 

 fronds lying sere and brown, with broken stipes, just back of the 

 new fern climip; if we examine the rootstock we can detect be- 

 hind them, remains of the stems of the fronds of year before last ; 

 and still farther behind we may trace all the stems of fronds which 

 gladdened the world three years ago. Thus we learn that this 

 rootstock may have been creeping on an inch or so each season 

 for many years, always busy with the present and giving no heed 

 to its dead past. One of the chief differences between our ferns 

 and the tree-ferns of the tropics, which we often see in greenhouses, 

 is that in the tree-fern the rootstock rises in the air instead of creep- 

 ing on, or below, the surface of the ground. This upright root- 

 stock of the tree-fern also bears fronds at its tip, and its old fronds 

 gradually die down, leaving a rough "trunk" below its crown of 

 green plumes. 



