190 WAYSIDE WEEDS. 



boast of mucli beauty. We cannot pretend to make 

 our bundle a large one, and before we attempt to 

 form it at all, we must make Sure you know a 

 fern when you see it. The first characteristic, 

 moreover, is a negative one — the entire absence of 

 those floral organs which have engaged so much of 

 our attention hitherto. The second character is the 

 presence, on the back of the fronds, of those collec- 

 tions of seed-cases and spores that represent the 

 ''fern seed," so famed in olden time (Figs. 112, 113, 

 114), which stand in the place of flowers and their 

 essential organs of reproduction. This character 

 you will of course find only when the plants are 

 somewhat advanced in age, and even not then upon 

 all the fronds, varying too in appearance (Figs. 112, 

 113, 114) from the round " sori" covered by their 

 kidney-shaped iuvolucres, as in the male-fern, to the 

 na,ked sori of the common polypody (Fig. 112), the 

 prolonged sori of the hart's-tongue (Fig. 113), or 

 the marginal covered spore collections of the com- 

 mon brake, or elegant maiden's-hair of the fern-case. 

 For another character we must look to the very 

 earliest stage of fern growth, and it is so peculiar, 

 that having once recognized it you cannot be 

 deceived as to the nature of the plant which is 

 springing into its vegetable existence. Ferns for 

 the most part come up in what botanists call a 

 " circinnate," or " gyrate " formj the future frond 

 being curled up in the most curious and wonderful 



