44 
DEVELOPMENT OF A FERN. 
ON “THE DEVELOPMENT OF A FERN 
FROM ITS SPORE.”* 
BY Gr. C. TURNER. 
X Two hundred and fifty years ago it would 
have been a dangerous thing to have discussed 
a subject so intimately connected with the 
powers of darkness as “fern seed.” The 
researches of latter days have, however, 
cleared away from the character of ferns the 
“uncanny” imputations of former ages. We 
know now that “ fern seed,” though collected on St. 
John’s Eve, will not assist even an insolvent debtor to 
become invisible ; we know that moonwort, though gathered 
by the light of a hundred full moons, has not the least effect 
in loosening locks, bars, or fetters, nor will it with a touch 
“ Unshoe the new-shod steed.’• 
We know so much, but most of us do not yet understand 
the curious little drama which is being acted humbly and 
quietly upon those minute “ marchantia-like ” green specks 
which are strewn over our ferneries and wayside banks 
and woods. 
The development of the fern from the spore had been a 
mystery through all time up to the middle of the present 
century. The honour of the discovery of the true mode of 
reproduction in ferns is due to Nageli of Zurich, who, in 1844, 
published a memoir entitled “ Moving Spiral Filaments in 
Ferns,” wherein he announced the existence of the bodies 
now called antlieridia. But he did not ascertain the whole 
truth, for he described the arcliegonia as modified forms of 
the antlieridia. In fact, he seems to have been so taken up 
with his “ moving filaments” (movement in the vegetable 
world being considered as a novelty in those days) that he 
regarded other phenomena as of secondary interest, and 
evidently watched them less carefully, for he describes an 
archegonium filled with sperm cells which emerged from it as 
from the antlieridia. However, in the following year Count 
Suminski, of Berlin, cast clearer light upon the subject, and 
Hofmeister and others following confirmed previous obser¬ 
vations and added new ones. 
* Transactions of Section D of the Leicester Literary and Philo¬ 
sophical Society. Head October 17, 1883. 
