248 
W. C. Worsdell. 
I have myself recently observed the same phenomenon in the 
case of the above-mentioned species in the Fern-house at Kevv. 
In the case of one shoot which I may take as a typical example, of 
the two rhizophores at one fork of the stem, that on the lower 
surface was perfectly normal and elongated, and with the usual 
dark-brown colouration, the upper one was very short and changed 
into a leafy shoot; at the next node the upper rhizophore was a 
leafy shoot and growing almost horizontally: at the next the lower 
rhizophore was much elongated, growing downwards, and with 
leaves somewhat sparsely scattered along its whole length ; the tip 
was becoming green, the rest being dark-brown, and it was just 
beginning to bend upwards, while at intervals along its course it bore 
a short leafy branch (this rhizophore represents an interesting 
transitional form between the normal organ and the rhizophore trans¬ 
formed into a leafy shoot); at the next node the lower rhizophore 
is a very short leafy shoot and there is no upper one ; at the next 
the only rhizophore present, viz., the lower one, is a leafy shoot 
which at first began to grow downwards but soon bent upwards 
sharply; it therefore also represents a more or less intermediate 
stage of transition. 
On other shoots the transformed rhizophores were much less 
half-hearted; many of them at once grew quite vertically upwards 
into typical leafy shoots, each arising at the point of forking of the 
normal stem; the extreme base of these “rhizophore shoots,” for 
a distance of 2 or 3 mm., is dark-brown and leafless like the normal 
rhizophore. This dark-brown colour gradually merges into the 
green of the typical normal shoot. 
In a panful of Selaginella Mettenii, A.Br. (a garden hybrid) I 
noticed that in most, if not all, the plants normal rhizophores were 
only formed in the lower part, where the plant was moist and 
shaded ; in the upper part the rhizophores were invariably replaced 
by typical leafy shoots which appeared always on the upper surface 
of the stem ; I saw no transitions between them and rhizophores, 
but their position shewed clearly that they represented the latter. 
1 have also observed rhizophores in the form of leafy shoots in 
the following species, besides the two above-mentioned : 5. Wilde- 
novii Baker, 5. canaliculata Baker, 6'. serpens Spring and 6'. grandis 
Moore. In the first-named I saw a rhizophore in the form of a 
branched leafy shoot quite a foot high ; in the last-named (S. 
grandis) they are in the form of small, flower-like structures, as 
described by Goebel. 
