810 



THE PHENOMENON OF 



impregnation organs,* and have lately been observed in 

 the Mosses.t I mention this occurrence of hybrids 

 among the Ferns and Mosses, in order to adjoin some 

 remarks leading us back to our subject. If hybrids are 

 formed in Mosses and Ferns, this takes place in a pre- 

 paratory structure which belongs to the mother-plant ; 

 the individual entering into the state of hybridation, 

 (according to the ordinary acceptation of the term,) 

 becomes composed, consequently, of one part which is 

 mother-plant, and one part which is hybrid. The hybrid 

 must develope, as it were, grafted on the mother-plant. 

 Not until the second generation, that developed from the 

 spores of the hybrid, can the preparatory structure 

 assume the hybrid nature, and this, according to the 

 analogy of most Phanerogamous hybrids, might be sterile 

 by itself, and only in case of impregnation from one or 

 other parent species, develope to an ulterior structure 

 recurring more or less to this. The prothallia of the 



* The discovery of the antheridia of the Ferns was made by Nageli in the 

 year 1843, and published in 1844, (' Zeitschr. fur Wiss. Bot.,' heft 1, 

 p. 168;) the above-mentioned treatise of Suminski, in which the archegonia 

 were first described, dates from 1848 ; the first observation of a hybrid fern 

 was published by Martens, in ' Bulletin de I'Acad. Roy.' de Bruxelles, 1837. 

 The hybrid there mentioned of Gymnogramma {Ceropteris) chrysophi/lla and 

 calomelana, subsequently named G. Mmiensii, was soon followed by a second 

 between G. chrysojthyUa and distans, [G. Massoni, Auct.,) described by 

 Bernhardi in Otto and Dietrich's ' Gartenzeitung,' 1840, p. 249; Regel has 

 enumerated several more hybrids from the same genus in the 32d No. of the 

 ' Botanische Zeitung,' for 1843. I myself found, in the year 1834, in a 

 mountain valley near Baden, among Aspidium Filix mas, and A. spinulosum, 

 (the normal form together with the variety dilatata,) several rhizomes, all 

 within a small space, of a fern which stood about mid-way between the 

 two species named, and probably was to be regarded as a hybrid product of 

 them. I calfed it Aspidium remotum, and formerly regarded it, doubtfully, 

 as a variety of A. rigidum, which it resembled, not only in habit, but in 

 degree of formation and mode of decrease of the pinnse. I have never 

 since been able to find it again, either in the original station or anywhere 

 else in the Black Forest, but it has maintauied its existence in the Botanic 

 Garden of Carlsruhe, whence it has passed into the gardens of Freiburg and 

 Leipsic. See Doll, 'Rhein. Flora,' p. IG. 



I See Bayrhoffer, 'Uebersioht der Moose, Lebermoose und Flechten des 

 Taunus,' ('Jahrbucb. des Vereins f. Naturkunde im Herzogth. Nassau,' 

 5 heft, 1849,) where two supposed hybrids are mentioned, namely, 1, of 

 Physcomitrium fasciculare, and 2, of Pliyscomiiriiim pyriforme, viii[\ Funaria 

 hygrometrica. 



