178 FERN GROWING 



aculeatum, and he crossed its varieties in as many ways as 

 their limited number permitted, being rewarded by raising 

 good varieties. It was Mr. Fox who sowed decompositum- 

 splendens, and produced those marvellous plumose forms of 

 divisilobum of Aspidium angulare, but how he had accom- 

 plished this he was not able to say ; in fact for a long time 

 he could not believe that Colonel Jones had given him de- 

 compositum-splendens spores. After another sowing, when 

 others, gathered from the same plant and mixed with spores 

 of iolydactylus, had produced polydactylous forms of divisilobum, 

 he' was convinced. He raised a very fine variety from the 

 author's euprepes. One day when the author was dining with 

 him he spoke with great confidence as to a number of 

 seedlings that were beginning to show marked peculiarities, 

 although yet infants ; a few days after, he wrote saying that 

 if alive and well in June, when new fronds had been de- 

 veloped, he should like to thoroughly examine every one 

 of them, adding (although then well), "If I should die before 

 then, come at once and take these seedlings away with you." 

 A very few days afterwards he had passed away, and these 

 seedlings were added to the Shirenewton collection by Miss 

 Fox's desire. 



Mr. Fox found a good fertile form of Scolopendrium 

 vulgare var. crispum, from the spores of which the author 

 has raised distinct varieties. His sterling and far-seeing 

 abilities made it a pleasure to visit him at his hospitable 

 home ; it was impossible to spend even an hour there with- 

 out gaining some useful knowledge, or without feeling that 

 he also appreciated what others were doing. Mr. Fox was 

 a firm believer in multiple parentage. He used to say that he 

 had been a microscopist for more than sixty years, and had 

 worked out very difficult problems, but that they were all as 

 nothing in comparison with the chance of detecting, by 

 microscopic aid, the impregnation of a Fern in a conclusive 



