STUDIES IN FERN LIFE 31 



individually these specks are quite invisible 

 to the naked eye, although collectively they 

 appear like so much dust on a piece of white 

 paper. One is amazed at the gigantic number 

 of spores which each one of our fern fronds will 

 produce. Every sporangium, it is computed, 

 wiU be responsible for, perhaps, fifty spores ; 

 each tiny sub-division of the leaf will bear quite 

 this number of sporangia, whilst the tapering 

 leaflets at the side of the stalk may carry thirty 

 or forty fertile sub-divisions. Thus every 

 leaflet on the fern frond, bearing spores at all, 

 may produce quite one hundred thousand 

 spores, and the total spore output of each frond 

 must be many millions of spores. Truly a pro- 

 digious total ! Yet the world is not overrun 

 with Male Ferns, although every spore pro- 

 duced is capable of giving rise to a specimen. 

 Of course, a very large number of the spores 

 are completely lost, owing to the unfavourable 

 situations in which they alight. 



The very best thing that can happen to the 

 spore is that it shall settle down in some moist 

 shady place. Here, after an interval, the tiny 

 speck of life begins to develop, not into a mature 

 fern, but into a flat green scale which has been 



