RAMBLES IN SEARCH OF FERNS. 
7 
but which generally creeps upon or under the ground in our small 
members of the family, and might easily be mistaken for the root. 
The whole fern, as we have them, i3 called a frond , and the frond is 
composed of a main stalk and leaflets, or pinnae. It has no flowers, 
but its seeds grow abundantly on the back of the pinnse. The seeds, 
or spores , are inclosed in cases. From the form and position of these 
the genus of the fern is decided. The first division of ferns, the 
Polypodiacese, have the seed cases in groups, without any covering. 
Take my pocket lens, and look if any of those you have in your hand 
answer to this description.” 
We examined some tall feathery fronds, the back of which were 
scattered over with seed masses. But on each of these masses was a 
tiny cover, so that proved that they were not members of the 
Polypodiacese. Seizing upon some smaller fronds, which were hanging 
from a rock close to us, she exclaimed — 
“ The seeds here are of a sensible size ; one can discern the little 
clusters of grains without a glass. I suppose these grains are spores ? 
Look, they have no covering !” 
“ The ‘ grains,’ as you call them, are cases of seed, Esther,” I 
■ replied. “ The spores themselves are too minute to be distinguished, 
except as fine dust, even with a common lens. The covering is, as 
you say, absent here, which proves the fern to be a Polypody — the 
pinna being simple agrees with the description of the common 
Polypody (Plate I., Fig. 1 and A). Though I have never before studied 
ferns, the form of this one is quite familiar to me, as an ornament of 
old tree stumps and rocks in all countries. There is a beautiful small 
fern growing like a miniature forest in the deep shade beside the brook 
here, which I have never observed before. Its purple tinted stem, 
three-branched frond, and, above all, the naked clusters of seed cases, 
convince me that it is the Oak fern ( Polypodium dryop/eris, Fig. 2). 
This wise book describes it as growing in moist oak woods ; its 
rhizoma seems scarcely to penetrate the earth, contenting itself with 
merely nestling among the dead leaves. ” 
“ There is another kind growing on that spongy clayey bank,” 
b 2 
