LIFE STORY OF FERNS 205 
Fruit dots, spore cases, and spores of ferns. If you 
take a polypody fern or a lady fern (some of the 
‘shield’ ferns in the greenhouse will do) and look on 
the underside of the leaves, you will perhaps see them 

Fic. 249. Bank of ferns (after Macmillan). 
covered with little dark brown spots. Some people 
take these for msects, and scrape them off the fern leaf, 
for fear they will hurt the fern! But you can teach 
them better than that. 
