THE FERN BULLETIN 



95 



shell or testa enclosing a young plant A spore, on 

 the other hand, consists of a thickened cell wall within 

 which there is not a plant of any kind — only some 

 protoplasm and a nucleus. The seed consists of mil- 

 lions of cells, each the equivalent in structure, though 

 not in function of a spore. Seedlings, therefore, 

 must continue to he produced from seeds and spore- 

 lings from spores — the growers and fern students may 

 call them what they please; it will not change their 

 nature. 



BOOK NEWS. 



In 1908, the last year for which we have this infor- 

 mation more than four hundred and sixty articles on 

 ferns and their allies were contrihuted to the periodi- 

 cal press by fern students in all parts of the world. 

 Contributions in the German language appear to be 

 most numerous, but the single writer with the greatest 

 number of articles to his credit is an American. 7 he 

 second most prolific writer is an Englishman and the 

 two next are Germans. As usual, the bulk of the 

 articles refer to nomenclature, distribution and the 

 like with morphological topics second. The report in 

 which abstracts of these papers are given covers nearly 

 one hundred pages and is issued annually by Dr. C. 

 Brick. 



Dr. Ruth Marshall of Rockford College, Rockford, 

 111., has issued an interesting little booklet entitled 

 'Terns of the Dells of the Wisconsin River," which is 

 sure to be of value to the many tourists who visit. that 

 picturesque part of the Wisconsin. This consists of 

 about sixty pages, in which text and illustrations al- 

 ternate, each species pictured being described in un- 



