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crests, a proof that the original tendency is still in the 

 blood, and also that bulbils are not absolutely reliable for 

 the propagation of varieties. Furthermore, Mr. Bolton 

 gave us portions of the fringed crests of some plants, 

 which when layered produced abundance of prothalli and 

 young plants, all but one of which appear to be fringed, 

 and that is quite plain edged, the old blood presumably 

 reasserting itself here also. Plants, indeed, so produced 

 vary considerably ; in another culture, from Drummondise 

 itself, we have a true marginate form, but with certain 

 Drummondiae. features which preclude the idea of a stray. 

 The biological question underlying these fringed forms, 

 especially the aposporous ones, is whether it is not a 

 reversion to a far back ancestral lichen type, a possibility 

 which recommends itself to the cultivator's mind when he 

 has but to cut off a piece of the edge and peg it down, in 

 order to see it grow out in all directions and cover the 

 pot or pan with proliferous prothalli in profusion, imitating 

 a Marshantia precisely. In other families we have also 

 fringed forms. Poly podium vulgare Cornubiense often fringes 

 its most finely cut fronds with long ligulate projections. 

 Birkenhead's P. ang. plumosissimum crowds its delicate 

 mossy fronds with an outgrowth of similar character, moss 

 on moss, and in Bolton's A. f.f. Clarissitna we see the slender 

 tips of pinnae and pinnules run out into prothalli tipped 

 tongues, while finally in L. p. m. apospora, a beautifully- 

 crested son of the King of the Male Ferns, but cursed, 

 alas ! with a consumptive constitution, every point is only 

 waiting to touch the soil, in order to root as a prothallus, 

 and breed a crop of asexual youngsters like itself. 



Chas. T. Druery, F.L.S., V.M.H. 



