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APPENDIX. 
they had originated in other than the usual way, viz., from 
spores, and 1 consequently did not exhibit them. 
To-night, however, 1 have pleasure in exhibiting some of the 
plants produced as 1 have described. 1 had hoped, too, to be able 
to bring pinnae bearing pseudo-bulbils as described and sketched 
by me last year ; but owing, partly, 1 believe, to the long, dry 
summer, and partly to the fact that the parent plant (which is not 
under my control) was placed out of doors for a time, I am only 
able to produce pinnae showing the fructification in a very 
immature state — not so immature, however, but that they afford 
ample evidence of abnormality. 
To anyone accustomed to deal with Athyrium Filix-foemina, 
the first glance will strike one with surprise at the presence of 
fresh, green, unripe fructification with, in most cases, unlifted 
indusia, upon a deciduous Fern in November, months after the 
time when sporangia proper have ripened and scattered their 
spores, and when the indusia are usually in a ruinous and 
fragmentary state. Here and there the indusia on the pinn^ 
exhibited will be seen to be lifted and to partially disclose a 
number of curious, club-shaped and occasionally serpentine, 
cellular masses which, though very different from the swollen, 
pear-shaped bodies of last year, differ as widely from embryo sori, 
showing no signs whatever of annulation or of the symmetry 
which would characterise immature sporangia when sufficiently 
advanced to protrude from the indusium. While, however, the 
pear-shaped pseudo-bulbils are conspicuous by their absence, it 
will be seen that some of the club-shaped excrescences are larger 
than others. From their general appearance, I believe that, given 
a more favourable season, some few would assume predominance, 
and form the pear-shaped pseudo-bulbils at the expense of the 
weaker growths, which would abort, as in many analogous cases. 
1 incline the more strongly to this opinion, as among the bases of 
the pear-shaped bodies produced last year there were numerous 
thin, thready, and shapeless growths, exactly such as would be 
likely to originate in such a way. 
My present object being to confirm as far as possible the data 
1 gave in June, I would call your attention — first, to the existence 
of the young plants upon the table, raised as described ; and, 
secondly, to the manifestly non-soriferous form of fructification 
borne by the parent plant, an examination of which will, I think, 
go far to convince you that its offspring are engendered neither 
through spores nor by bulbils, but by some other mode of repro- 
duction— a mode which, from constant and careful watching 
through all its stages, I believe to be one so far unrecorded in con- 
nection with any other Fern — viz., through prothalli produced, 
not from spores, but by direct bud-growth from the parent frond. 
