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Wonder number three. So careful is Nature of these 

 first-born children of hers, that every season, instead of the 

 few hundred or thousand seeds yielded by her floral 

 offspring, Ferns cast off millions upon millions of spores, 

 each capable of yielding not one but more, so that a single 

 plant could people a district in one generation. Eleven 

 hundred millions were estimated by the writer as the crop 

 of one Lady Fern in one season. 



But wonder number four, with which we will conclude, 

 though not exhausting our list, is the singular lact that our 

 native British species, some forty odd only, have yielded 

 far and away more " sports " or beautiful varieties than all 

 the rest of the world's species put together, some four or five 

 thousand, indeed, can be distinguished as quite distinct by 

 connoisseurs, and the bulk of these have been found wild in 

 our woods and hedges of the western counties and else- 

 where where Ferns grow profusely. At Kevv Gardens 

 there are two or three thousand, forming such a collection 

 as exists nowhere else in the world. These varieties are 

 mostly charmingly tasselled at all their tips, or curled or 

 finely cut, so as to be far more beautiful than the common 

 forms, others are oddly varied and though, perhaps, more 

 curious than beautiful, are extremely interesting. 



We must, however, add another wonder, for it is perhaps 

 the biggest of all in this special connection and that is that, 

 even as a prophet has no honour in his own country, so 

 this unique British branch of botanical study has been until 

 recently so far ignored by nurserymen, horticulturists and 

 gardeners generally, that the true British Fern fanciers are 

 few and far between, and the popular idea is, or rather was, 

 that they are fairly represented by the wild weed forms 

 obtainable froai the street hawker at a penny a root. 



C. T. D. 



VARIEGATED HARTSTONGUES. 



So many disappointments have been connected with 

 presumed variegated Hartstongues that the expert is rarely 



