30 FERN GROWING 



a great authority on microscopic animal life. He showed 

 that it required a crowd of male organs to effect impregna- 

 tion amongst certain microscopic animals ; and to test if this 

 extended to Ferns, further experiments were made — i.e., sowing 

 together in equal quantities spores from a crested and from a 

 normal form of Nephrodium paleaceum — in order to ascertain 

 the proportion of crested to non-crested seedlings. These 

 plants are another proof, for there is not a single plant that 

 is not crested more or less. However, the author had in 

 reality proved this previously when spores from four varieties 

 sown together produced seedlings having all their characters 

 on one frond. 



" Another experiment with the Hart's-tongue is also of 

 peculiar interest. An undulate form, a spiral form, a rugose 

 form, and a tasselled form were sown together, and amongst 

 the seedlings there are plants that exhibit all these charac- 

 teristics.* 



" Ferns that the author is now sowing spores from have 

 a long pedigree — some date back more than thirty years, at 

 least a dozen generations, and the seedlings from these plants 

 are all abnormal. Over and over again the author has had 

 batches of seedlings without producing a single common normal 

 form. It is quite true that these may revert under adverse 

 circumstances to the original form, and keep normal under those 

 conditions. Nevertheless a more generous treatment and a 

 more suitable situation will, in the course of time, restore 

 them to their original varietal characters. As early as 1844 

 the author divided Polypodium Cambricum and Scolopendrium 

 crispum, growing the one half in large flower-pots, and planting 

 out the other halves in exposed situations in a soil mainly 

 composed of new red sandstone. In the course of a few years 

 both these varieties that were planted out had returned to the 



* Further information with illustrations will be found in another part of this 

 work. 



