IV.—Notes on Collecting Ferns, with parti¬ 
cular Reference to certain Bornean Ferns 
of Considerable Interest. By D. H. Camp¬ 
bell, Professor of Botany, Stanford University, 
California. 
No group of plants is more interesting to the botanist 
than the ferns which are, in a sense, connecting links 
between the seed-bearing plants and the lower mosses or 
liverworts. 
Every collector of ferns knows that the classification is 
based mainly upon the position of the little capsules, or 
sporangia, which contain the spores. The latter are 
deposited as a fine powder, as will be seen if a leaf with ripe 
sporangia be laid upon a sheet of paper. If these spores are 
examined microscopically each is seen to be a single cell, 
whose outer membranes are more or less thickened to 
protect the contents against injury. Many persons who 
collect ferns are quite unaware that the plants developed 
from these spores are very different indeed from the fern 
as it is usually known. 
If the spores are sown upon moist earth, or a bit of tile, 
in the course of a few weeks a crop of little plants will 
appear, which show no trace of the familiar fern leaf, but 
are thin, green, filmy structures, lying flat on the ground, 
and usually somewhat heart-shaped in outline. In most 
ferns these simple little plants—“ prothallia ” or “ pro- 
thalli,” to use their technical name-—are not more than a 
quarter of an inch or less in diameter. In certain forms, 
however, the prothallia may be much larger. 
The prothallia of many ferns may be easily found by 
examining moist banks, &c., where ferns are growing. 
When one wishes to collect prothallia of a given species it 
is best, if possible, to select a bank where the fern is grow¬ 
ing in such a position as to allow the spores to fall in 
small crevices, or upon freshly exposed soil, where mosses, 
&c., have not had time to take possession. In a climate 
like that of Sarawak, almost any bank or recent cutting, 
where the earth has been freshly exposed, will almost 
invariably show a rich crop of fern prothallia. 
Bar. Mus. Joum,, No. 5, 1914. 
