THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN" GUIDE. 239 



for so laudable a purpose. We see them at exhibitions looking magni- 

 ficent, and no doubt they sell. I have seen perhaps thousands, cer- 

 tainly many hundreds, but I never saw one yet that was so prepared 

 and furnished as to be in the least likely to last as a home decoration ; 

 the ferns put in would either soon outgrow the spaces afforded them 

 or perish through lack of heat, or light, or greater depth of soil, or 

 some other circumstauce fatal to their well-doing. The way in which 

 the dealers in fern cases crowd one of their pretty receptacles with 

 specimens is one of the marvels of the nineteenth century ; let those 

 who like them buy — let those keep them who can. 



There may be no harm in repeating that Miss Ma-ling's cases are 

 still the best at present offered to the public. I have already said that 

 they are far from perfect, and their greatest imperfection is the abso- 

 lute impossibility of removing from them any excess of moisture which 

 may accumulate in the soil. It is admitted that excessive moisture 

 ought never to be there, and it must be insisted upon that in spite of 

 every care excessive moisture will get there sometimes, and then — yes, 

 and then it must remain there. A pretty conclusion to a year or 

 two of patient work, to see a collection fading away, and know that the 

 only remedy is take the whole affair to pieces and plant again. On 

 the day I write this I have sat beside Mrs. H. while she manipulated 

 one of her cases, in which of late the ferns were not doing so well as 

 they ought, and what was my horror to observe that the soil had be- 

 come wet and pasty through the frequent use of the syringe during the 

 recent hot weather, and that unless the case had been unstocked there 

 must have been losses in the coming winter. This was the more vexa- 

 tious because that case has furnished me with some of the most interest- 

 ing notes I have yet made on fern cases, and on this occasion of un- 

 stocking a few special favourites have had to be disturbed, and I was 

 particularly anxious to see them go through another winter without the 

 help of heat. When I tell you that amongst these special favourites 

 were nice plants of Pleopeltis membranacea, Adiantum reniforme, and 

 Khipidopteris peltata, which so much delighted Mr. Crocker when he 

 was here (he told me it was a finer plant than they have at Kew), you 

 will perhaps bestow a little sympathy on the two connubially-united 

 pteridologists who bewailed together on the occasion referred to, that 

 it is so easy to get water in and so hard to get it out of a Malian plant 

 case. If I could only gain one day for a quiet holiday at home I would 

 produce a better fern case than has been made yet. But I have no 

 hope of that at all, any more than I have of carrying into effect many 

 more ideas of things and processes that would be useful. But I put 

 my suggestion in black and white here, and perhaps amongst our readers 

 there may be many sufficiently spirited to carry it out. There is not 

 much in it, yet perhaps enough for the purpose, and I print it pro bono 

 publico. 



In the cases against which I complain, the chief bulk of the hot 

 water is kept at one end. This causes a partial instead of a general 

 heating. The water is poured in through a ridiculous key-hole sort of 

 orifice, into which you may insert a funnel if yon can persuade it to 

 stop there. To draw off the water there is a paltry tap capable of 

 passing about half a pint per hour, and you cannot remove the pan of 



