CHAPTER III. 
PROPAGATION. 
As a branch of Fern culture, propagation, in its various 
aspects, offers a most instructing subject for study to the 
cultivator. Of the various kinds of propagation the most 
natural is that which is performed by the agency of the 
spores. The process followed in germinating by these most 
wonderful atoms of plant life has already been described. 
It remains in this place simply to indicate, for the guidance 
of the cultivator, how the propagation of spores can be the 
most easily effected. There are four principal methods 
which may be described for the raising of spores. They 
may, when ripe, be shaken from the frond upon the damp 
convex side of an inverted clay pot of a porous nature, 
upon the damp sides of a piece of sandstone, upon moistened 
silver sand, or upon a preparation of compost, which will be 
more particularly described anon. In all cases there must 
be a covering of glass over the pot, sandstone, silver sand, 
or prepared compost. 
The best method of raising spores is that last mentioned ; 
and the process may be very simply described. In a pot, 
the ordinary red clay pot is probably the best to use, there 
should be put a drainage of ‘ crocks,’ or broken bricks, to 
about half its depth, beginning with a concave crock over 
the hole of the pot, and putting the next largest pieces over 
this, and the smallest particles and debris last. Then upon 
this thick stratum of drainage put in a layer of compost 
