MULTIPLE PARENTAGE 41 



ing at all, to yield very diverse progeny, displaying several charac- 

 ters in an erratic fashion, which might be imputed to other 

 varieties sown in conjunction. To take a concrete case, in Ex- 

 periment No. 6, page 84, " the spores of eight varieties were mixed 

 and sown together. These were multifidum (crested), Victoria 

 (cruciate), uncum (lax), Frizellce (lunulate), truncatum (truncate), 

 proleoides (a cruciate with projecting pinnae), crucipinnulum 

 (cruciate in the pinnules), and ramosum (branched)." Now, in 

 point of fact, " proteoides," as its very name implies, would, 

 per se, produce offspring of precisely the character depicted on 

 pages 85 and 86, which are claimed to show the characters of seven 

 out of the eight varieties shown, and thus to demonstrate their 

 multiple parentage, that is, that seven half sperm cells had con- 

 trived to combine with one half ovarial cell, a biological im- 

 possibility. In point of fact, instead of seven combined characters 

 there are only signs of two in the truncate form, and of " pro- 

 teoides " alone in the other, while the crested characters of multi- 

 fidum and Victories, the branched character of '' ramosum," and 

 the ball-like pinnae of " Frizellice " are entirely absent. We have 

 taken this instance as a typical one of many. Turning now to the 

 extraordinary combinations Mr. Lowe produced in the Harts- 

 tongues, he sowed undulatum (a wavy fronded Fern), spirale (a 

 dwarf variety with a spirally twisted apex), muricatum (a muricate 

 form), and keratoides (a branching, crested form), and he claims 

 that four resulting plants, depicted by him, one of which is named 

 " quadriparens ," showed unmistakably the influence of four parents, 

 but here "undulatum" and "spirale" are closely akin, the latter 

 a dwarf form of the former, and the great vitiating factor in all 

 such experiments is lost sight of, viz. that once a Fern has departed 

 from the normal, its progeny may vary greatly without any crossing, 

 and may even spontaneously produce crests, as has occurred over 

 and over again. Another point is that if such crossing experiments 

 be continued for years under glass it is practically an impossibility 

 to make pure sowings, and a few strange spores may produce plants 

 which lead to entirely mistaken conclusions, since they may already 

 be the result of a cross, and, becoming crossed again, produce four 

 combined characters, instead of two. It is, however, rather the 

 fundamental simplicity of the fertilizing process which we have 

 described, upon which we rely as controverting the theory of 

 multiple parentage, and we put it forward here merely that the 

 opposing views should be grasped by fern-growers, and not in the 

 very least as detracting from the great services which Mr. Lowe 

 rendered in connection with our native Ferns by his publications 

 and experimental work, since it was indubitably he who first con- 

 vinced scientific botanists that hybridization was possible. A 

 secondary object is to point out to students and experimentalists 

 in this line of research that it is unwise to sow mixtures of spores 



