GENERAL DESCRIPTION, 
7 
grow indifferently from any part of their surface, the 
parent cell becoming divided into others, which are 
again multiplied and enlarged, until a small germinal 
scale, or primordial frond, is formed, and from this, in 
due time, the proper fronds are produced. The surface 
of the spores is sometimes smooth, sometimes tuber- 
culate, or even echinate’ (prickly like a hedge-hog.) 
From this almost invisible dust spring the multi¬ 
tudes of Ferns that crown the summer with their 
various plumes. Each atom of dust becomes a green 
speck, then a scale in which root and stem and leaves 
are yet but one confused and undeveloped mass, then 
a bud, then a young frond pushing its crozier-like form 
or its tender spikelet through the earth, then a full- 
grown magnificent plume like the Royal Fern — 12 
feet high by the Irish Lakes, or a dainty coronal of 
feathers like the common Male Fern so abundant in 
our own English Mountain District. 
The proper roots of Ferns are fibrous, proceeding 
from the under side of the stem when the stem is pro¬ 
strate or creeping, but from all sides indifferently when 
it grows erect. When sufficiently numerous they 
form entangled masses. The fibres are mostly rigid 
and wiry, often in youth more or less covered with 
fine soft hairs. 
The stem is sometimes called a caudex, sometimes 
a rhizome. The caudex is the root-stock, not the root, 
but a true stem, either uprightly-growing or droop¬ 
ing : the upright stem of some foreign ferns sometimes 
growing to the height of fifty feet or more, like a forest 
tree. The rhizome is the creeping stem, or that part 
