SHortTeER NOTES 115 
‘‘As Wordsworth so beautifully says, 
‘To me the meanest flower that blows can give 
-Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.’”’ 
NeEwsuryport, Mass. 
Recent Fern Literature 
Dr. W. N. Steil has published a careful and detailed 
study of apogamy in Nephrodium hirtipes Hook.’ This 
species appears to depend entirely on asexual repro- 
duction. In his cultures, Dr. Steil avoided conditions 
likely to induce apogamy; fertilization took place in 
the usual fashion on prothallia of other species grown 
in the same cases. But those of N. hirtipes, though 
they developed normally from the spores, produced no 
sexual organs in most instances and in any case only 
antheridia. The plant of the spore-bearing generation 
always arose as a direct outgrowth from the prothallium. 
In at least one other apogamous species, fusions between 
the vegetative cells of the prothallium have been ob- 
served to precede the growth of the young plant; but 
even this substitute for fertilization was lacking in 
N. hirtipes. 
Dr. Steil gives a detailed account of the cell-changes 
which accompany the growth of spores in this species. 
They present some unusual features. In particular, 
the mother-cells from which the spores are eventually 
formed undergo a partial division, never fully com- 
pleted, at an early stage of their growth and, probably 
because of this, sometimes produce six spores to the 
cell instead of the usual four—the latter a phenomenon 
never before observed in cryptogamous plants, though 
a similar one has been noted in certain phaenogams. 
1 Steal, W. N. Apogamy in Nephrodium hirtipes Hk. Annals of Bot. 
33: 109-132. pls. 5-7. Jan., 1919. 
