216 
APOSPOEY IN FEENS. 
though later on I ascertained that Mr. Mappleheck had raised 
plants from similar bulbils, though only the verbal record of the 
facts remained, and the proliferous forms had apparently not 
been perpetuated. Pursuing my researches, I found, about a 
fortnight later, another altogether different form, far more 
proliferous than the first, the primary frond bearing no less than 
seven bulbils. 
In the former {Fig. 1), instead of the simply palmate 
form usually assumed by the first frond of an Athyrium, it is 
bipinnate and very foliose ; the figure is, of course, immensely 
enlarged, the whole plant at that stage being about f inch high 
only. The buds upon the first frond proceeded, without any 
dormant interval, to develop small pinnate fronds, and also aerial 
roots, which latter grew so vigorously that they projected them- 
selves into a mound of soil raised at a distance of half an inch 
from the back of the frond. The second frond produced four buds 
which, however, remained dormant through the winter, the 
season being already far advanced when they appeared. All the 
buds, however, produced eventually independent plants, which 
did not prove to be proliferous; nor did the later fronds produced 
by the parent fern, which turned out to be a crested form of 
very ordinary type. 
The second example {Fig. 2), however, has proved a con- 
stantly proliferous form, bearing two sorts of fronds belonging to 
the uncum strain, to which, by the way, Mr. Mapplebeck’s 
plants belonged, a fact which confirms the correctness of the 
verbal record. One type of frond is long and narrow, but 
slightly crested and barren of bulbils; the others, however, are 
densely crested d la acrocladon, and the bulbils are so densely 
scattered among the divisions of the crests that they have, when 
opened out, the appearance of being peppered. If these crests 
he layered in the autumn a little forest of young ferns rises from 
the spot in the spring. This form, in its earliest stage, will be 
