APOSPORY IN FERNS. 
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seedling plants near parents, 
sporangia, 
spores, 
hygroscopic movements of sporangia, 
seedlings from spores, 
1 697 Gerarde observed 
1648 Caesius ,, 
1669 Cole 
1686 Ray ,, 
1715 IM orison raised 
1788 Ehrbardt observed the prothallus, 
1789 Lindsay ,, germination of spores, 
1827 Kaulfuss ,, development of prothallus, 
1844 Naegeli „ antheridia, 
1846 Suminski ,, archegonia, 
which completed the phases of the normal development. 
This was followed by the discovery by Prof. Farlow, in 1874, 
of an abnormal mode of reproduction called apogamy, which 
consists in the occasional development of the fern by direct bud 
growth from the prothallus without the intervention of the 
sexual organs, a phenomenon which is the direct converse of 
apospory, which we are met to consider ; the fern in the one 
case growing direct from the prothallus by a simply vegetative 
process, and the prothallus in the other growing in like manner 
directly from the parent fern. 
The discovery of apospory having, however, been preceded 
by that of sundry other forms of proliferation upon our native 
Athyria, which really led up to it, I would still claim your 
indulgence for a few minutes in order to detail to you the 
successive steps in question. 
In September, 1882, whilst examining a batch of very young 
plants, raised from spores sent me by Mr. P. Neill Fraser, of 
Edinburgh, I was struck by the appearance of two whitish dots 
upon the first frond which had risen from the prothallus of an 
Athyriiim, On closer investigation with a lens, I was forced to 
the conclusion that they were bulbils, though I could scarcely 
credit it ; as to my knowledge no proliferous form of Athyrium, 
was known, a belief which all ray enquiries at the time confirmed, 
