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and then maintain it, we feel we have, as it were, a " finger 

 in the pie," aad that some of the credit is due to ourselves. 

 This is precisely the case with the " King of the Male 

 Ferns," that very gift of fertility in offsets above alluded 

 to has to be persistently checked if we want a Tree Fern ; 

 if we obtain a crown of the plant and instal it in a pot, in a 

 short time it will send up a charming shuttlecock of its 

 tasselled fronds and promise to be all right, but very soon 

 we shall find little fronds peeping out at the base of the big 

 ones and all round a little forest of youngsters will appear, 

 each one developed from a bulbil near the base of the big 

 fronds. These grow apace and in time we have a dense 

 bush in which the original shuttlecock is indistinguishably 

 merged, while the whole lot are fighting for existence in the 

 limited area of soil which should only serve for one crown. 

 Hence a mass of medium-sized fronds, pretty but mediocre. 

 If, however, so soon as these little basal fronds become 

 tangible plants we prize them off with a blunt knife, we 

 shall find them come away with a little bunch of roots, all 

 ready to give to admiring friends or pot up for additional 

 specimens. These removed, more will come in time, but 

 we must persist, and presently we shall see that the original 

 shuttlecock, freed from competition at its roots or contribu- 

 tions from itself towards a brood of youngsters, is fattening 

 up its crown tremendously as a preliminary to sending up 

 a circle of great robust fronds with double the development 

 of those in the bush. Each year this goes on until the 

 maximum height is attained and a trunk begins to form by 

 the annual crown always springing up within that of the 

 previous year at a slightly higher level, while the old 

 fronds, dropping in the late spring as they are pushed out- 

 wards by the new ones, leave their stumps as a contribu- 

 tion. All this time the youngsters will have been trying 

 to assert themselves, but as time goes on the tendency 

 decreases, and, finally, the old plant has obtained such a 

 foothold that if any appear they are too far from the ground 

 to become rivals, though they still should be removed. 



