1 '3 



pinna, pinnule, or pinnulet spreads out eventually at its 

 precise and proper angle and in its precise and proper 

 plane. Meanwhile, if it be a tree fern, each frond is 

 sending down the trunk its own special contribution of 

 wiry brown roots, acting at once as feeders for itself, and 

 strengthened of that trunk for its additional burden. 

 Finally all this is done, the terminal growth ceases, and 

 here and there at thousands of points in the marvellous 

 network of veins which form the final architectural filling 

 in, as it were, there is a busy fashioning of millions on 

 millions of spores, the ultimate end and purpose of the 

 whole structural scheme. But the structural work is by 

 no means done. Each spore, though individually invisible 

 to the naked eye, is beautifully constructed. In its heart 

 is a tiny cell replete with all its potencies of the race, and 

 sheathed with several protective coats. The spores, 

 unlike the loose ones of the fungus tribe, are usually stored 

 in tiny caskets of an oval shape, attached in groups to the 

 parent frond by tiny jointed stalks. These caskets are 

 cunningly fashioned with a jointed spring passing nearly 

 round them perpendicularly, and ending at a weak point 

 among the cells which compose them. When the spores 

 are ripe this weak point splits, gapes a little, and then 

 suddenly the backspring comes into action with explosive 

 effect, the top half of the capsule flies violently backwards, 

 and in the convulsion the spores are ejected far and wide. 



As a rule the fern frond differs from its apparent parallel 

 in a tree branch in having no axillary buds, i.e. buds seated 

 at the junction of the leaves with the stems, but in some 

 species instances, usually abnormal, occur, such as in our 

 proliferous Polystichums or Shield Ferns, while in some 

 of the Gleichenias it is a specific feature. In other cases, 

 however, buds are freely formed, not in the axils but on 

 the frond surface, springing from veins well within the 

 margin. Asplenium bulbifevum and several closely allied 



