FERNS. 43 



to a greater number of barren ones. Marazion Marsh 

 was the first locality where I found this beautiful plant 

 in abundance. We were seeking plants of any and every 

 sort in that first-rate botanical field. Plots were there 

 covered with the delicate pink bells of the Bog Anagallis, 

 and here and there spikes of the Musk Bartsia remained. 

 Suddenly we beheld the compound spires and fresh green 

 foliage of the Osmunda. In my eagerness I forgot the 

 swampy nature of the ground, and plunged ankle-deep 

 in water. I heeded not any such trifling inconvenience, 

 for I had found the object of my ambition — the Eoyal 

 Fern, or Osmund's Roy ; and it was not only one plant, 

 hundreds were there, growing under remnants of old 

 wall and hedge. There, on the site of the old Jewish 

 town, behind what may have been the carefully-planted 

 fence of those ancient inhabitants of Marazion, those 

 early miners and traders in Cornish tio, flourishes now 

 the noble head of the English representatives of the still 

 more ancient family — the family which flourished when 

 rocks only a degree less ancient than those containing the 

 ore were yet in course of formation. 



Gerarde speaks of this Fern as " Osmund the Water- 

 man," in allusion to an old tradition of a waterman living 

 on the banks of Loch Tyne, and hiding his family among 

 these tall Ferns during an incursion of the Danes. I saw 

 the noble Fern again in a situation of more beauty, and 

 scarcely less historical interest. It was growing freely 

 on the banks of Loch Lomond, about a mile from Tarbet, 

 reminding me forcibly of Wordsworth's description of it 

 about English lakes : — 



