Our fathers believed that when a fern produced its seed, the little brown grains at the back of a fern-leaf were all that nature had provided for the purpose. Linnaeus thought so, and so did everybody else till a quick-eyed Polish gentleman, Count Leszezye-Saminski, found out the mistake. I will not ask you to pronounce both the noble naturalist's names, for letters arranged like these are unfamiliar to our English mouths; but it is proper that so great a discoverer should enjoy such immortality as the Gardeners' Chronicle can confer. This great event happened in the year 1848, when it was made known to His most gracious Majesty King Frederick William IV. of Prussia.

The reason, or at least one of the reasons, why nobody saw before what Count Suminski saw in 1848, was that nobody began at the beginning when they studied the nature of ferns. It is indeed to be doubted whether many people, even in this enlightened age, know what the beginning is. Let me endeavor to make-this clearer.

If you look upon the damp ground where ferns shed their seeds, you may find it covered with tiny green scales not very unlike the spots called hearts in a pack of cards, only with a few hairs for roots, sprouting from near the pointed end (see Fig. 1). The easiest place to find them in, is the surface of a garden pot or of an old wall, in a damp and shaded fernery. There they lie flat upon the ground, looking like infant liverworts. They are the beginnings of ferns, as you will presently see.

Lift carefully one of these bodies and place it under a microscope (one of Smith* and Beck's educationals will do), the underside upwards; you will find that it is a little convex, and on the convexity stand a few very small projections looking: like blisters, but of two sorts. One sort has a hole in the end (Fig. 2), the other is something like a netted ball (Fig. 3). They have received various names; let us; call the first a pistillid, the second an antherid.

Here we have what are now styled the sexes of ferns. The pistillid is the-lady, the antherid is the gentleman; strange ladies and gentlemen it must be confessed.

Mrs. Pistillid is only a nest, with a little egg hidden at the bottom. Mr. Antherid is a sort of pimple. Yon may see the egg by looking into the nest; but when yon cast your eyes upon the pimple yon will probably see nothing except a netted surface. But if you squeeze it, out come little transparent bags, in each of which is rolled up spirally a sort of vegetable worm. In time, the worm uncoils, gets out of his bag and shows himself. In Fig. 4 he is seen half extricated; Fig. 5 yon have him wriggling about. And a very surprising fellow he is with a tall like a corkscrew, and a head furnished with a bristly beard.

When the worm aforesaid sets out upon his travels, he mores over the surface of the fern-scale in search of a nest (pistillid), and when he finds one he gets in if he can; at least so says Count Suminski. That feat being accomplished, a wondrous change takes place. The egg grows up into a perfect fern-leaf; at the same time the green beginning shrivels and disappears. When a start has once been made, the leaf becomes longer and longer, and broader and broader, another leaf unfolds from its bosom, in its turn to give birth to more, till at last all are old enough to bear brown grains upon their back or edge. And then the destiny of the fern is accomplished.

It is out of one of these grains that the seed falls, which sprouts into new beginning such as I have first described (Fig. 1).

Is all this really true? A good deal of it certainly is. Acute observers, since Suminski'a time, have so far verified his statements that no doubt exists about the antherids, and the pistillids, and the crawling vegetable worms, and the uprising of a perfect fern-leaf from the nest-like pistillid. Such things are, however, extremely difficult to see, and can only be witnessed by well-trained eyes, armed with well-made achromatic microscopes, in the hands of dexterous observers. They must be taken on trust, as are mountains in the moon, by those who have no telescopes. What is really doubtful is, whether the worm crawls into the nest, and how it gets there. Men, however, have come to believe in the phenomenon; and we cannot contradict them, for it is hard to prove a negative.

And these are what are now called the sexes of ferns. - R. E., in Gardeners' Chronicle.