54 



THE FERN BULLETIN 



with dioecious prothallia and recent experiments have 

 shown that the female gametophyte or prothallus can 

 be made to produce antheridia. At the meeting of the 

 Botanical Society of America in Minneapolis last De- 

 cember, F. C. Newcombe announced that he had been 

 able to perform the reverse of this and produce arche- 

 ^onia on male prothallia. 



Death of J. H. Hart. — John Hinchley Hart, F. 

 L. S., formerly superintendent of the Royal Botanical 

 Gardens at Trinidad and well known for his work in 

 tropical botany, died on Feb. 20, 1911 at the age of G4 

 years. Mr. Hart was born in England but began his 

 botanical work as a landscape gardener in Nova 

 Scotia in 1872. From there he went to Jamaica to 

 take charge of the ground at Kings House, the Gov- 

 ernor's residence and later upon the departure of Sir 

 Daniel Morris, he acted as Director of the public 

 gardens and plantations of Jamaica until his transfer 

 to Trinidad in 1887. In 1908 he retired from Gov- 

 ernment services, but continued to busy himself with 

 botanical matters among which was the editing of a 

 volume on the ferns and fern allies of the British West 

 Indies and Guiana, a task which he was particularly 

 well fitted to perform. 



Cambium in Ferns. — In all woody stems that in- 

 crease in diameter from year to year, there is a layer 

 of growing cells between the bark and wood that an- 

 nually adds new material to both these tissues. This 

 layer of cells is called the cambium layer. One great 

 group of flowering plants, called the monocotyledons, 

 lacks this cambium, and it is also absent from the 

 modern ferns and their allies with the exception of 

 some 6f the species of Tsoetes and here and there in 

 Selaginelia. In the ancient fernworts, however, it was 



