﻿MR. JOHN SCOTT ON THE TREE FERNS OF BRITISH SIKKIM. 7 



Lama, or higL. priest of the Lepclias, lias the interior of his temples and altars strung 

 with moonwort for one or other of his gods. The Lepchas also, like many other of the 

 natives of India, cook the insipid tubers of Nej)hrolepis ttiherosa — ^the poorest fare of all, 

 and one certainly on which man or beast will be more likely to die than live. The 

 Xepcha, however, in his native forest, would scarcely starve, so well does he know the 

 qualities, and so readily can he pounce upon the more or less nutritious roots, the pulpy 

 stem, leaves, or seeds — tx knowledge evidently acquked by hard experience, and trans- 

 mitted from generation to generation. It seems, indeed, with this race, a parent's first 

 duty to acquaint his child with the products, nutritious and noxious, of his native 

 forests ; and the aptitude with which they acquire this knowledge is truly surprising, and 

 rather the result of the operation of instinct than that of experience or previously ac- 

 quired knowledge through the senses. Anyhow the necessity of circumstances stimu- 

 lates the acquirement of such knowledge, and well supports Mr. Darwin's view, that 

 from innumerable experiments made through dire necessity by the savages of every land, 

 with the results handed down by tradition, the nutritious, stimulating, and medicinal 

 properties of the most unpromising plants were probably first discovered. 



Anatomy of Caudex. — The following remarks under this head, though possessing but 

 slight claims to originality, will, I have thought, be of some service in their negative or 

 affirmative relations to the statements of other observers, which are in several points very 

 conflicting and still, in fact, sub lite. Thus, according to Mirbel, the caudex consists 

 of "a simple fascis of petioles or leaf-stalks" (Elemens de Phys. Veget. i. p. 121), an 

 .opinion indorsed by Lindley, Balfour, and others in their class-books ; while Schleiden 

 considers what he terms the attempt " to represent the stem of the fern as merely com- 

 posed of leaf-stalks grown together, is so entirely at variance with the law of its develop- 

 ment, and consequently so totally devoid of foundation," that he does not deem it worth 

 while to contest the point. *' Germination," he continues, " shows that there is a rudi- 

 ment of the stem prior to the formation of the leaves and leaf-stalks " (Sclileiden's * Prin- 



J 



ciples of Bot.* p. 197). Less decided though apparently similar opinions are held 

 Mohl ; so also Hofmeister, in his paper on the development of Pteris aquilina (* Higher 



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Cryptogams,' p. 225), remarks that "the distribution of the vascular bundles in the 

 unbranched frondless ends of shoots exactly corresponds with that of the frond-bearing 

 stem, a convincing proof that the arrangement of the vascular bundles in the stem is not 

 dependent upon the position of the appendicular organs, or the number and form of the 

 bundles occurring in such organs." 



With reference to the mode of ramification of the stems of ferns there is also a 

 difference of opinion. Brongniart, Hofmeister, and others confine normal ramification 

 to the bifurcation of the apex of the stem above the youngest frond of the bud, and 

 explain the frequent lateral position of one fork of the branch by the more vigorous 

 development of the other. This is the lateral bud ramification of Hofmeister as distin- 

 guished from normal dichotomy, in which there is an equal development of the bifur- 

 cated apex of the stem; while adventitious buds are such as make their appearance 

 underneath the insertion of the youngest appendicular organ, whether on the outer 

 surface or in the interior of the tissue. This view is, of course, perfectly accordant with 



