300 Bower . — Some Normal and A hnormal 
positions. It is further to be remembered that dryness is in 
most cases essential to the successful dissemination of the 
spores which it is the end and object of the sporophyte to 
produce, in order to multiply the species. Supposing now 
that the sporophyte and oophyte be continuously subjected 
to uniform conditions of moisture (and it is to be remembered 
that this is the habit of Hymenophyllaceae, and especially so 
for our Filmy Ferns under cultivation), there will be every 
reason to expect that the dissemination of spores will be in 
abeyance ; the germination of the spores in the sporangium 
itself is a first step towards apospory, and this might very 
well lead to the direct vegetative outgrowth of the oophyte 
from the tissues of the sporophyte. More especially is this 
likely to occur where, as in Filmy Ferns, the structure of the 
two is more nearly similar than in other Ferns. The opinion 
may here be again expressed, and it is in no way shaken by 
the discovery of these new cases, that apospory is to be 
regarded as a sport induced by special circumstances, rather 
than as a reversion to an old type of development. 
In the presence of apogamous budding in the same species 
(7>. alatnm ) and even in the same individual which shows 
the phenomenon of apospory, we see a still further simpli- 
fication of the life-cycle, which has, I believe, never been 
recorded in any other species. There is, I apprehend, no 
antecedent improbability that the two phenomena should 
occur in one and the same plant, and the fact that they do 
may be regarded as a coincidence rather than a point of 
further importance. A special interest attaching to this 
observation is connected with the light, which its record in a 
well-established case like the present will throw upon the 
case of Isoetes described by Goebel 1 . In plants, which he 
found growing deeply submerged, the place of the sporangium 
was habitually occupied by a sporophytic bud, and Goebel 
offered the explanation that ‘ here there is obviously a case 
which belongs to the series of phenomena recently styled by 
1 Bot. Zeit. 1879, p. 1. 
