APOSPOEY IN FEENS. 
227 
may have impelled most of the would-be sporangia too far in the 
normal direction, the result being their abortion and the monopoly 
of the whole of the vigour of the pseudo-sorus by a select clique 
of four or five of what we may consider the more conservative 
part of the community. 
The growths of 1884 seemed most unlikely subjects for the 
production of prothalli and plants, but they have proved them- 
selves, so far as prothalli are concerned, to be capable of 
producing them in far greater numbers than those of 1883, the 
large majority of the clavate bodies having, even with quite cool 
treatment, produced prothalli, which I have no doubt whatever 
will yield plants in due time.* I have brought down with me 
a few pinnae of Clarissima shewing the prothalli, and it will be 
observed that it is almost immaterial whether tlie pinnae be laid 
down with the excrescences uppermost or undermost, as under 
close culture they develop in either case, actually lifting the 
pinnae from the soil when developed underneath them. 
It will thus be seen that the fact has been established beyond 
all doubt that Colonel Jones’s beautiful Athyrium forms a new 
link between the ferns and the flowers, a fact of which he 
probably little dreamed when rescuing it as he did, literally a 
brand from the burning.” My thanks, and very sincere ones, are 
due to him, and also to Mr. Wollaston for providing me with 
materials and aiding me in carrying my investigations through, and 
getting their truth accepted and confirmed by the best authorities. 
In my opening remarks I alluded to a second discovery of 
^Apospory, for which we are indebted to Mr. G. B. Wollaston, a 
discovery which quite throws into the shade that in A. F.-f, 
Clarissima, the prothalli in this case ( Polystichum angulare, 
var. pulcherrimum, Padley) being actually produced altogether 
independently of the sori, without even a local connection, 
* June, 1885. They did so in profusion. — G. T. D, 
B 
