FERTILIZATION, DEVELOPMENT, AND
FRUCTIFICATION OF FERNS
Until very recently the development of ferns, their methods of fertilization and fructification have been shrouded in mystery. At one period it was believed that "fern-seed," as the fern-spores were called, possessed various miraculous powers. These were touched upon frequently by the early poets. In Shakespeare's "Henry IV" Gadshill exclaims:
"We have the receipt of fern-seed, we walk invisible."
He is met with the rejoinder:
"Nay, I think rather you are more beholden to the night than to fern-seed, for your walking invisible."
One of Ben Jonson's characters expresses the same idea in much the same words:
"I had no medicine, sir, to walk invisible.
No fern-seed in my pocket."
In Butler's "Hudibras" reference is made to the anxieties we needlessly create for ourselves:
"That spring like fern, that infant weed,
Equivocally without seed,
And have no possible foundation
But merely in th' imagination."
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