Xll INTRODUCTION. 



half hour, when a summer sun is sinking unclouded 

 in the north-west. Within the space enclosed by the 

 walls are sundry buildings, by courtesy denominated 

 rockworks, but which are in fact close imitations of 

 the most unpicturesque stone walls that ever de- 

 formed the face of a hedgeless country. In Scotland 

 I have seen such walls, when built against a bank to 

 prevent its crumbling into a newly cut road, covered 

 with a continuous garden of our most beautiful Ferns 

 — Athyrium Filix-femina, Polypodium Phegopteris, 

 and P. Dryopteris, Lastraea Oreopteris, and L. dilatata, 

 Cystopteris fragilis, and Allosorus crispus, I have seen 

 crowded together for hundreds of yards : the water 

 from the land above is continually filtering through 

 the walls, and thus the roots are supplied with a per- 

 petual moisture. With a view of imitating this on a 

 small scale, my formal walls have been built ; each is 

 slanting at a slight angle from the perpendicular, and 

 they face different points of the compass. One, 

 situate under a thick Portugal laurel, has never yet 

 been visited by a ray of sunshine — 



" The beams of the warm sun play round it in vain ;" 



they cannot reach it ; a second enjoys half an hour's 

 sun ; a third basks in sunshine till noon ; and thus 

 all are varied. 



Even with this choice of situation, and after having 

 noted the natural habitat, I find it best to obtain, 

 when possible, a number of roots of the same species, 

 and to plant them in every situation : for instance, I 



