ASPLENIUM PARVULUM. 



SMALLER EBONY SPLEENWORT. 



NATURAL ORDER, FILICES (POLYPODIACE.^). 



ASPLFNIUM PARVULUM, Mertens and Galleotti. — Frond linear, pinnate ; pinna; o1)long, obtuse, 

 entire, auricled at the base ; stipe and rachis shining-brown, somewhat channelled. Stipe 

 about an inch in length, shining. Frond about three inches, attenuated at the apex, 

 rinn^ sub-opposite, sessile, three to four lines long, and one to two lines broad, entire, 

 auricled at the base on the upper side, a smaller auricle on the lower side. Sori crowded, 

 almost covering up the under surface. (:\Iertens and Galleotti, i^Umoire sur Us fo!ii;ircs c/ii 

 Mexiquf.) 



E never look upon a fern without wondering why it was that 

 the earlier polite writers almost entirely overlooked the 

 gracefulness of these plants, and sometimes even spoke of them 

 in contempt, or coupled them with disagreeable associations. 

 Shakespeare alludes but once to the fern, in the second act of 

 the First Part of Henry IV, where he makes Gadshill say, as he 

 is planning a robbery with a confederate: "We steal as m a 

 castle, cock sure; we have the receipt of fern-seed, we walk 

 Invisible " ; to which the confederate replies : " Nay, by my faith, 

 I think you are more beholden to the night than to fern-seed 

 for your walking invisible." Gadshill's remark alludes to the 

 popular belief that "fern-seed" has the power of making the 

 person invisible, and this superstition was probably based on 

 the mysterious manner in which ferns are propagated ; for it was 

 well known, even in Shakespeare's time, that ferns are not 

 fertilized like ordinary flowering plants. 



Modern poets have made some amends for this curious disre- 

 gard on the part of older writers; but still the ferns are neglected 

 to an extent which it is difficult to account for. In one of the 



