



1901 | BRIEFER ARTICLES 35% 
neighbor, Dr. Wills at Chard, found several hundred more. ‘The num- 
bers, however, represent the outcome of many years of persistent 
search, which, however, could not have been exhaustive, as it is recorded 
that Mr. Patey, visiting Mr. Moly, found one of the finest of all types 
(P. ang. plumosum Patey) in Mr. Moly’s own hedge, while Dr. Wills 
was indebted toa farm laborer for that unique fern P. ac. pulcherrimum, 
also found in a hedge close to his house, and thought to have a funny 
look about it by the finder. Finally as an inducement to fern hunt- 
ing, we have the incontrovertible fact that many of these wild sports 
are far more beautiful than the normal forms, and as such constitute 
decorative foliage plants of highest merit. 
A word may be added in reference to the soral bulbils, as these 
occurrences should afford good material for the morphological study 
of the sporangium. Professor Bowers’ monograph on apospory and 
allied phenomena, already cited, gives some illustration of this, and the 
writer’s previous paper’ also alluded thereto. Since then, however, 
such soral bulbils have been recorded as occurring on Adiantum capillus- 
Veneris vars. daphnites and imbricatum, and on Polypodium vulgare 
elegantissimum, while most of the superdum section of plumose Athyria 
have inherited the capacity from the original wild Axminster find. In 
all these cases the bulbils are seated on the soral sites, and are usually 
accompanied by sporangia grading from imperfect and aborted ones to 
perfect ones with full complement of perfect spores which germinate 
freely and yield fairly typical plants. In the case of the Polypodium, 
such bulbils occur only on the most highly developed fronds, and on 
pinnules of extremely fine cutting, the terminals of which run out into 
nearly inch long lingual extensions, pointing I think to aposporal 
tendencies. The sori are massive and consist of filamentous processes 
some of which lengthen out into fronds, while others form perfect 
Sporangia of normal golden yellowcolor. Here then do not appear those 
massive cellular growths which are found on the Athyria, but in time 
one bulbil gets the predominance and a little plant of several small 
fronds is developed. Unfortunately, neither my leisure nor my train- 
ing permit me to investigate properly the transitional stages which 
must exist in cases like these, but I should be happy to provide material 
to any one who desires to follow up this line of research.— CHARLES 
T. Druery, rr Shaa-road, Acton, London, W. 
‘Jour. Linn. Soc. 21: 254. 1884. 
