[5]“In _O. sensibilis_ the sori are borne on the middle of the vein, and consist of a tough cylindrical receptacle, three or four diameters in height, bearing sporangia thickly all over its surface, and covered when young by a delicate hood-like indusium, attached half-way or more around the base of the receptacle on the inferior side, and having the crenulate-margined opening toward the apex of the segment. At an early stage the blackberry-shaped sorus is almost entirely covered by the indusium, which resembles a closely drawn cowl, but with the growth of the sporangia it is thrown back, or rent, and soon disappears, the sori becoming confluent. The receptacle is very persistent, and may be seen, covered with the stalks of the sporangia, in the dried last-year’s fertile fronds, which are always found where the plant grows.” Transcriber’s Notes --Copyright notice provided as in the original—this e-text is public domain in the country of publication. --Silently corrected palpable typos; left non-standard spellings and dialect unchanged. --Only in the text versions, delimited italicized text in _underscores_ (the HTML version reproduces the font form of the printed book.) --Only in the ASCII text version, delimited translated Greek letters in {braces} (the UTF text and HTML versions preserve the Greek letters.) End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Beautiful Ferns, by Daniel Cady Eaton