1909-1910.] 219 



"THE CROSSING OF FERNS. REMINISCENCES OF 

 SOME PIONEERS OF THE CULT." 



On Tuesday evening, 12th April, at the sixth monthly 

 meeting for the Session — the President (Mr. Nevin H. Foster) 

 in the chair — Mr. W. H. Phillips read an exceedingly interesting 

 paper on " The Crossing of Ferns," in the course of which he said 

 the crossing of ferns, like other new truths, had to go through 

 all the stages of ridicule and incredulity, until the convictions of a 

 few have forced conviction upon the majority, and the fact has 

 received public recognition. By British fernists is claimed the 

 credit of having established the truth in this instance. Until 

 comparatively recent times it was generally accepted that ferns 

 did not cross, and yet, considering the assistance which in their 

 endless changes of structure other forms of life. were known to 

 derive from the power inherent in them of crossing naturally, it 

 must at times have seemed strange to the more thoughtful that in 

 a class of plants so remarkable for variation as ferns that power 

 should be altogether absent. It was not until a foreign fern or 

 two had done what many British ferns had long been known to 

 do that the serious attention of botanists was drawn to this 

 subjecL. The first authoritative recognition was contained in a 

 letter to Mr. E. J. Lowe from Sir Joseph Hooker in 1884, in 

 which he wrote — " The hybridisation of ferns is now an accepted 

 fact." But in the general ignorance formerly prevailing with 

 regard to the reproduction of cryptogamic plants it seemed 

 altogether absurd that ferns could possibly cross. No bee or fly 

 had ever been suspected of visiting a fern or moss with any such 

 intention or result, and enough was known of the structure of a 

 fern to preclude the idea of any external agency in fertilisation. 

 It was not until Naegeli, Sumenski, Hoffmeister, and other 

 Continental botanists had raised the veil which had so long hung 

 over the secrets of the reproduction of ferns and other kindred 

 forms that people were able to recognise that, however, different 



