CHAPTER XIV. 



FERTILISATION AND PROPAGATION. 



HE relation towards each other of these two subjects is, as 

 regards Ferns, of such importance that they can scarcely 

 be treated independently of one another. The mysteries of 

 the fecundation of these plants being but little known to the 

 majority of even practical growers, it becomes indispensable, 

 before describing the most natural mode of propagation — by spores — to 

 explain as clearly as possible the phenomena by which the rudiments of life 

 are produced. The generation of vegetable life in the case of Ferns is 

 essentially different from that of most other classes of plants, in which it 

 is simply the result of a fertilised flower, and in which everything connected 

 with the process of fertilisation can be observed with the naked eye. In 

 the case of plants that produce flowers, the ovaries, when they are either 

 naturally or artificially fertilised, swell, and in the course of time yield seeds ; 

 these, being placed under favourable conditions, possess the property of 

 giving birth to plants which, like the parent plants, are capable of 

 reproducing themselves in a direct manner by means of their flowers. 



Fertilisation. 



Filices, or, as they are popularly called, Ferns, which form the most 

 important division of Linna3us's twenty-fourth class, Cryptogamia, and which, 

 in the second class of Lindley's " Natural System " are called Acrogens, the 

 division being Filicales, are leafy plants, the leaflets or fronds being produced 



