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woods, or on our wild moorlands and hillsides, from Land's 

 End to John o'Groats, and in the sister and Channel Islands. 

 Naturally these wild sports are not so common that a 

 merely superficial search will mean a good " bag ; " it is, on 

 the contrary a case of one in many thousands, so that the 

 connoisseur fern hunter is glad if a day's or even a week's 

 hunt results in a single really good thing, although as a 

 matter of fact the writer has rarely devoted a day to careful 

 hunting without finding something distinct and worth taking 

 home. Naturally such ** finds " present themselves in 

 different guises, they may be mere seedlings in which it 

 is only the experienced eye which can detect any promise, 

 or they may be old-established plants. Two of the writer's 

 best finds, for instance, consisted of a tiny plant an inch or 

 two high, and a huge clump of thirty-three crowns, which 

 required the assistance of two men to lift and a horse and 

 cart to transport. As a general rule these " sports " are 

 solitary, or, if there be more than one, the others are 

 obviously the offspring either by offset or spore of the same 

 progenitor. They may betray their presence boldly, or 

 by the mere projection of part of a frond from a mass of 

 common ones, or they may be entirely hidden and only 

 discernable by pushing asunder the foliage of their com- 

 panions. In any case, he or she \vho aspires to be a fern 

 hunter of this class must be prepared to be patient and 

 persistent, and be also thoroughly well acquainted with the 

 common forms of the species, so that any difference may 

 be noted. As a rule, the successful fern hunter commences 

 by a more or less chance find, which appears to be essential 

 to infuse the necessary faith in the existence and discover- 

 ability of such sports into the beginner, but once this has 

 happened the fern "fever" is caught and the student 

 speedily becomes the enthusiast. The main point to bear 

 in mind is that wherever ferns are growing there is a 

 chance of a find, and some of our own finds have turned 

 up where plants were few and far between. So much for 

 the hunting. And now for a word or two on the quarry. It 



