FERN GROWING 39 



also resulted. For illustrating multiple parentage, the Hart's- 

 tongue has been selected, as the simple, strap-shaped fronds 

 are best able to show the various departures from the normal 

 form. 



" In repeating the experiments of mixed spores, the 

 varieties in each case have been limited to three or four, 

 so that the resultant changes could be more narrowly in- 

 vestigated. Distinct mixtures were sown in 1887, 1888, 

 1889, and 1890, and the results in all the experiments 

 establish the fact that the antheridia of more than one 

 variety have assisted in the impregnation. The varieties had 

 conspicuously distinct characters, and in an example of 1888 

 the spores were gathered from a dwarf spiral form, a muricate 

 or warty form, an undulate, and a ramose one ; more exactly 

 speaking, the varieties were spirale, undulatum, muricatum, 

 and keratoides. The parents are exhibited as well as three 

 of their children, the latter having the names of quadriparens, 

 Darwiniana, and echinatum. They unmistakably show on 

 each plant the characters of the whole of these parents. In the 

 hundreds of these seedlings, as might be expected, the majo- 

 rity show only the characters of two parents, in a less though 

 considerable number the characters of three, whilst only a 

 small number exhibit those of the four parents. The plants 

 in the 1889 experiments are from a muricate, a branched, 

 and a cup-bearing form, the latter known as peraferens, the 

 object being to obtain ' cups ' on a branching muricate Fern, 

 as this was a desideratum. There was no previous example of 

 more than one cup on a frond. In the seedlings a divided 

 frond can be observed with cups on each division, a tasselled 

 form with a rosette in place of an actual cup, and in another 

 example a marginal row of small cups : all are muricate. 

 It is worth remarking that the seedlings from mixed spores 

 never seem to produce any plants that exactly resemble any 

 one variety, they are all combinations ; in other words. 



