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should find it to be an insignificant excrescence on some 

 humble growth akin to the Liverworts, which still in lonely 

 guise are apt to cover the pots and pans in which these 

 developed relatives are growing. In some of these Liver- 

 worts, indeed, we find small and extremely pretty projec- 

 tions in the shape of turnstiles and ridged tabular growths 

 which bear spores as do the Fern fronds, though in 

 very different fashions. In others we see beautiful trans- 

 lucent cups seated on the surfaces and filled with little 

 green bodies which are, however, not spores, but practic- 

 ally detached buds to which no Fern is known to bear a 

 parallel. Anyway, it is certain that from such humble 

 beginning fronds originated in association with a basal 

 bud which produced fronds again, while in time, aeons 

 of time, inconceivable to the mind of man, these became 

 differentiated in all directions) size and cutting, until we 

 have arrived at the many thousands of distinct types which 

 now people the world from the minute grass-like Asplenmm 

 sept entv zonal e } or even smaller forms, up to the majestic 

 Tree Ferns of Antipodean Fern Glens and Forests. The 

 curious part of Fern history is that, judging by the fossil 

 remains, even as far back as the earliest Coal age, Ferns 

 were as highly developed, and appear to have existed in even 

 greater profusion than now, since that was indeed the Fern 

 age, Ferns and their allies constituting the main vegeta- 

 tion, hence for their evolution from the humble beginning 

 suggested, we have to antedate all our required aeons prior 

 to the Coal formations hitherto discovered. The idea 

 makes the brain reel, and yet must be accepted. Certain 

 phases, however, of Fern development or evolution appear 

 to have been left to quite recent times, since if we may 

 judge by the records gathered by geologists the marked 

 varietal forms, of which such an^abundance have turned up 

 under natural conditions in the last century, either did not 

 exist in those old days., or else, which we must admit as 



