The Sporing of the Fern 249 
compass, and is very pale and tiny, but even a 
pocket-lens will show that it has a leaf, or two, as 
the case may be, a little stem, and at the end of 
this a knob, whence the first roots will spring. 
And this little plant, in due time, will grow into 
the exact likeness of the parent-plant from which 
it sprang. : 
Judged by their exteriors, the little spores which 
dust the edges or dot the backs of fern-leaves are 
more elaborate than seeds, for the fern-spore has 
always two coats, and sometimes three, and the 
outermost coat is often as daintily wrought as if 
a fairy carver had expended his best skill upon it. 
But inside careful investigation with the most pow- 
erful of microscopes finds only a minute drop of 
jelly, containing a little starch, some oil, and many 
tiny floating grains of chlorophyll. No germ is 
contained within the spore of any cryptogam. 
But the jelly, or protoplasm, in the spore is in- 
stinct with creative life. When growth begins, the 
outer coat of the spore breaks irregularly, and the 
inner coat, with part of its contents, protrudes 
through the fissure, forming a knob, which is soon 
cut off from the rest of the spore by a transverse 
wall. This outgrowth contains little or no chlor- 
ophyll, and it lengthens rapidly, plunges downward 
