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APOSPORY IN FERNS. 
higher orders of vegetation, such as flowering plants, and that 
of the cryptogamic families to which ferns belong. In the one 
case the reproductive organs, viz., the flowers, are almost 
invariably among the most conspicuous parts of tbe plant, and 
the manner by which the process of fertilization is effected is 
easily investigated. The flower is provided with a very evident 
ovary, to which is attached the stigma : these represent the 
female organs. Then there are the stamens or male organs, the 
pollen grains from which, falling upon the stigma, develop tubes 
which pass down it to the ovary and fertilize it, the result being 
seed capable of reproducing the parent form. This seed, finding 
a suitable nidus, sends out roots into the soil, and leaves into the 
air, and the plant, without further complication, takes on the 
form of its parent. 
With ferns, however, the process is so much more complex, 
and the whole of the reproductive action is conducted on a scale 
so excessively minute, that we cannot wonder at the slow pro- 
gress which was made in the discovery of the modus operandi; 
it being in point of fact only forty years ago that the last step 
was attained in the investigation of the normal mode of their 
reproduction, by the discovery that ferns, like flowers, were the 
result of sexual action, Naegeh discovering the antheridia, or 
male organs, in 1844, and Suminski the archegonia, or female 
organs, two years later. 
Probably one of the greatest obstacles to the earlier discovery 
of the true nature of the phenomena lies in the fact that the 
first result of the germination of a fern spore is the production not 
of a fern, nor anything resembling one, but of a small flat green 
disc, very like a young liverwort, upon the under surface of 
which the antheridia and archegonia are produced, and the 
fertilization takes place which results eventually in the repro- 
duction of the parent fern. 
In ferns, moreover, the sori or heaps of capsules containing 
