'9 



no record of a Fern sport being found that was so 

 indubitably associated and structurally connected with 

 a normal specimen as to admit of proof of this. Further- 

 more, if we assume that the sportive character originated 

 in a spore, that spore, when it was detached and found a 

 suitable nidus, produced a prothallus ; this in its turn 

 produced a large number of antherozoids or male 

 fertilising germs, equivalent to pollen grains, and a 

 cluster of archegonia, each of which had an incipient 

 seed at its base, which, being fertilised by an antherozoid, 

 produced subsequently the sport under consideration. 

 Who, however, can determine whether or not the 

 aberrant capacity may not have originated in an 

 abnormal antherozoid or an abnormal archegonial seed ? 

 All we can know is that by a conjunction a Fern was 

 engendered, which threw off the ancestral structural plan, 

 and adopted another on possibly very different lines, while 

 this new plan may be so pervasive in the new plant as to 

 be inherited to the full by its offspring for an indefinite 

 period on quite specific lines. It is therefore seen that 

 the starting-point of a variety or sport may occur in 

 several ways, viz. by a merely vegetative bud, by an 

 affected spore on an otherwise normal plant, or by affected 

 antherozoids or archegonial " seeds " on an otherwise 

 normal prothallus ; these last two being, it is true, only 

 assumptions, but reasonable ones, when we know how it 

 had been proved by extended experiments that Nature 

 knows no limit to her inventive capacity, the prothallus 

 and the Fern itself having exhausted every conceivable 

 variation in the life-cycle, as proved by Professors Bower 

 and Farmer, Dr. Lang, and Miss Digby. We may now 

 cite a few instances which have come under our notice in 

 connection with our theme. First, with regard to bulbil 

 sports, we may mention the recognised case when a large 

 plant of the Jones and Fox section, P. angular e plumosum 



