a juice secreted at the apex of the flower column. To this the snail crawls, and fertilizes the tiny flowers over which it drags its body. When this is accomplished it speeds on hungrily to the juice just above it and eagerly devours the poison. Death follows almost immediately. The secretion of this murderous liquid to lure the only creature that will visit such an offensively malodorous plant, which, without it, would very likely be itself destroyed by the foliage-eating snails, is a gruesome contrast to that happy flitting of butterflies which completes the fertilization of most flowers in equally effective but more pleasing fashion. Once impregnation of the ovule has been consummated, it begins a slow process of change, involving sometimes the modification of the ovary, or of the calyx, and very often of the swollen apex of the flower stalk upon which these organs are borne, known technically as the _receptacle_. We have seen, in the first chapter, what greatly different types of fruits are developed from different ovaries, and they of course produce seeds in varying size and amount. In the coco de mer, a palm from the Seychelles, the seed often weighs forty or fifty pounds, while in some orchids a single capsule will contain over a million almost microscopic seeds. Some of the devices of fruits and of seeds to secure the utmost spreading of the species over the earth will be considered in another chapter. All the devious methods of plants in producing their young become significant, so far as the earth’s vegetation is concerned, only when we find out what this enormous progeny has done with their opportunity. The chapter on the Distribution of Plants will tell us how well that opportunity has been used. 2. HIDDEN MARRIAGE OF FLOWERLESS PLANTS As we stated in the first chapter _cryptogams_, while they produce no flowers, must bear organs that perform the _functions_ of flowers in the reproduction of new individuals. Because, generally speaking, the process is more hidden in its manifestations, and nearly always requires the aid of the microscope to detect it, it is not so well known as the reproductive processes of flowering plants by those who have not the opportunity to manipulate such instruments. The act, however, is just as interesting, and, as we shall presently see, it may well be considered the ancestor of those more showy methods of producing young, which have been all too inadequately treated in the preceding pages. While the parts having to do with reproduction in flowerless plants are microscopic in size, it is possible to understand the broad outlines of what goes on and perhaps the life history of such plants is as well illustrated in ferns as in anything else. THE LIFE HISTORY OF A FERN