HOW TO PROPAGATE FERNS. 



147 



portance of having our pans, in which spores are to 

 be sown, absolutely free from all other germs of 

 plant or insect life. A very neat way of raising 

 sporelings is recommended by Mr. M. C. Cooke, 

 who states that it is derived from German botan- 

 ists. A piece of firm peat a few inches high is 

 soaked in boiling water to kill any life that may 

 be in it, and, when cool, placed on end in a 

 saucer. On this the spores are sown, and a bell- 

 glass placed over it. Water can be supplied by 

 pouring it into the saucer as it is absorbed by the 

 block of peat. To raise prothalli for microscopic 

 examination, bits of broken pots, on whose moist- 

 ened surfaces the spores are encouraged to germi- 

 nate, will be found excellent, as the prothalli can 

 be scraped away unmixed with particles of earth, 

 and be brought clean to the lens. 



In English greenhouses several ferns have been 

 known to appear, whose origin it is impossible even 

 to conjecture. Lomaria Patersoni^ a Tasmanian 

 species, sprang up at Kew in 1830, and Doodia 

 blechnoides in 1835 ; and of these species it was 

 supposed that not a single example was in culti- 

 vation in England, and that of the former only 

 one herbarium specimen — the only one in the 

 kingdom — was safely packed away in the British 

 Museum. Nephrodium setigenim appeared in the 

 greenhouse of a gentleman in Salem, when it was 

 known that there was not a plant of that species 



