FERN GROWING 



THE experience of fifty-three years' diligent research has 

 made the British Ferns a matter of everyday life with 

 the author. It is impossible to watch each of the changes 

 from the infant to the fully grown frond life of a Fern (not once, 

 but a hundred times, and not of one species, but of nearly all 

 the British species), without observing something new, some 

 peculiarities that seem to upset all our preconceived notions, 

 peculiarities requiring a careful watch, and the repetition over 

 and over again of various experiments. When this has been 

 done for a number of years and with similar results, and not 

 without every precaution being taken in order to thoroughly 

 test the accuracies of these discoveries, at first as regards the 

 possibility of crossing Ferns, which formerly was considered 

 by botanists as an impossibility ; then as to the possibility 

 of dividing the prothallus, and of so dividing as to secure the 

 sexes on different divisions ; and further, as to the ability of 

 growing any one of these divisions for seven years in the pro- 

 thalloid condition, and afterwards, at the will of the experi- 

 menter, causing it to put forth, fronds ; and lastly, the ability to 

 cause any three or four varieties to impregnate at the same 

 time one of these divisions, and produce varieties showing all 

 their characters blended on one and the same frond — these are 

 facts of such significance that the experimenter is desirous of 

 recording what he has done, and of describing the details. 



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