CHAPTER II 

 THE LIFE HISTORY OF FERNS 



pERNS, as compared with flowering plants, are inconceivably older, 

 since, in very similar forms to those of our present species, they 

 existed in those far-distant times when our coal measures were 

 formed, the evidence of which is incontestable, since the great bulk 

 of such coal consists of the debris of Ferns and their allies, the 

 mosses and Equisetums of that day, the recognizable remains of 

 which are frequently clearly preserved in the coal itself. There is, 

 practically, no doubt whatever that these old Ferns were evolved 

 from sea-weeds); but, judging by the very material difference be- 

 tween the two tribes of plants, even in the carboniferous age, it 

 must be assumed that another immense period of time must have 

 elapsed during the evolution of the one into the other, so immense, 

 indeed, that, as in the case of the subsequent evolution of 

 flowering plants from Ferns and their allies, the mind entirely 

 fails to grasp it. Modern evolutionary scientists are practically 

 unanimous in assuming that life must have begun in the shape 

 of some very simple type of organic cell, engendered, how we know 

 not, in the originally warm ocean waters. 



Simple, however, as this must have been, it was yet endowed 

 with some subtle power of modification and adjustment to its 

 environment which, in course of time, led it to assume many 

 shapes, varying from that of a simple crawling cell, like our present- 

 day Amceba, to ciliated ones, capable, by means of motile hairs, of 

 swimming actively about in search of food. Then the cells, instead 

 of dividing and separating into distinct unicellular individuals, 

 must have retained their union and built up compound bodies on 

 varied lines, and with definite vital organs, so as to fit them for 

 varied conditions and environments ; and at this point we may 

 assume that the two great branches of the organic tree of life, the 

 plants and animals, began to diverge and to evolve on separate 

 and distinct lines. We may, then, in imagination, view a warm 

 ocean, peopled with marine animals of many forms, and weeds of 

 perhaps equal diversity. The land, however, has not so far settled 

 down to stable or fairly stable conditions ; but in time we see 



