APOSPORY IN FERNS. 
229 
In conclusion, while thanking you for the patient hearing 
which you have accorded to what I fear has been to some of you 
a rather dry subject, I would ask those gentlemen present who 
take a special and active interest in our beautiful native ferns to 
examine their plants anew, and with special care, with the 
object of discovering, if possible, other cases, of Apospory, or 
perhaps new phenomena of a kindred nature. Bearing in mind 
the wonderful capacity for variation in the most unexpected 
directions which our British ferns possess, whether under cultiva- 
tion or in their natural state, and the singular fact that Nature, 
left to herself, supplies the most marked departures from the 
normal forms, A. F.-f. Victoriae and Acrocladon, for instance, 
among the hardy ferns ; bearing, I say, these facts in mind, it is 
singular that so far little attention has been paid to them by 
professedly scientific men, the fact of their variability seeming 
rather to earn for them the contempt of botanists, who do not 
scruple to call them mere monstrosities. 
Now, my belief has long been that this faculty of variation 
affords a rich field of research for morphologists, amateur or 
scientific, a belief which I need hardly say has been quite con- 
firmed by the discoveries which I have had the honour of laying 
before you this evening. To render research, how^ever, profitable, 
it is essential that when nnusual phenomena are remarked they 
should be at once investigated as thoroughly as possible, and, 
their true nature being established, that some permanent record 
be made of the fact. Each new fact becomes thereby a stepping- 
stone for further research, and general science is so much the 
richer ; w^hile without this, the discovery is apt to die with the 
discoverer, or, at the best, become mere hearsay, confined to the 
knowledge of a few, and rarely forming a reliable basis for 
additional data. 
