The first piece examined gave me the idea that I had trouve le noeud de l’affaire; the second made me doubt this; the subsequent ones went far to disprove it.

I was immediately struck with the resemblance of those organs, called ramenta, to what are fairly assumed to be the male bodies, in certain other families of the same grand division; and I at once came to the conclusion, that the barren fronds, were barren, because almost destitute of these ramenta; and that as these ramenta were confined to the base of the stalk, that is, to the part below its first ramification, an obvious necessity existed for the peculiar nature of the vernation.

Further examination of the thing, especially of the base of the stipes and the adjoining part of the rhizoma, threw me back almost into my original difficulties.  I find that the rhizoma is entirely covered with ramenta, which are brown, much detached at the base, and obviously represent a low form of leaf, i.e. in appearance, perhaps partly in function, but not in structure.  Among these, mature ramenta at the punctas of prolongation, which appear to be very irregular, are concealed, others much smaller, and much narrower, (which bear as obvious a resemblance, or even more so to the male organs of certain other orders,) than the ramenta on the stipes.  These are never entirely brown, the end cell alone is coloured, but though occasionally tinged with brown, they are filled with some fluid (even this is not so at first,) but do not appear to open.  I believe that subsequently all become highly tinged with brown, but what increase of growth they subsequently undergo, I know not.  The terminal cell is always solitary, very often attached to the one next it, which is generally single, obliquely placed, occasionally looking like the dimidiate calyptra capping a young seta.  The number of cells forming the base, or dilated part varies, but is always small in proportion to the larger ramenta, or protecting scales:  these last have a single terminal cell, which in fact must be the same in every really cellular growth sooner or later, the last degree of formative power being the production of a single cell.

At a subsequent period, still an early one, the terminal cell is fuscous-brown, and this colour then extends to the next in various degrees, but if it reaches the basilar ones at all, it does so at late periods.  The base of the terminal cell, and parts of the parietes of the next and next, present a coagulated appearance, precisely as in certain mosses.

No such thing as a petiolate leaf occurs in acrogens, all are attached by a broad base?  Of acrogenous leaves, those only are leaves whose attachment is at right angles with the stem; the rest are divisions of a frond.  Thus far with the ramenta.  The divisions of the frond, are, I find, not gyrate, but rather cochleariform involate.  The future reproductiveness is settled at a very early period,