being spread flat, tlie tinder side of a fresli ripe fern-leaf was pressed upon the earth, so as 

 to detach the seeds and their seed-vessels. The earth was then placed in a vial, corked up 

 and sent to England. The vial was six months on the voyage home ; upon its arrival in 

 mid-winter, its contents were sown in a shady damp hothouse. In a short time, the fern 

 plants sprang up * as thickly as mustard and cress,' and the plants are now successful. 



" The process thus described is attended by the very important advantages of securing 

 perfectly fresh seed, and of placing it during its passage home in a situation just as damp 

 as is necessary to maintain vitality unimpaired. The only precautions needed are to be 

 certain that the seed is ripe when pressed upon the earth, to take care that the latter is 

 merely damp, not wet, when corked up, and to keep the vial in the dark. In this way all 

 the ferns of the tropics may be now procured with the greatest facility. 



"Some may think that we previously knew all about fern-raising, and that herbaria need 

 only be ransacked to secure supplies of seeds. Never was a mistake greater. "We are 

 assured, indeed, that Willdenow raised various kinds of ferns in Berlin from seeds thus 

 procured, and that two plants of Gymnogramma calomelanos were once obtained in the 

 garden at Liverpool from seeds 50 years old taken out of the herbarium of Forster. Let us 

 frankly own that we read these stories with incredulity ; such so-called facts are open to 

 great suspicion. Not that we presume to question the good faith of those who are said to 

 have succeeded in the operation ; quite the contrary ; Willdenow, of Berlin, and Shepherd, 

 of Liverpool, who thought they had done these things, were probably mistaken. They 

 raised something — some sort of fern — but we are persuaded that the supposed result was 

 owing to one of those accidents which all who are conversant with great gardens know to 

 their cost are so common, or rather so inevitable, in such establishments. Some years ago, 

 the late Mr. G. Loddiges sowed the seeds of some hundred of ferns preserved in an herba- 

 rium, and if any one could have raised them he was the man. But the attempt was a 

 complete failure, the seeds would tiot grow. 



" We do not mean to say that fern seeds taken from plants recently deposited in an herba- 

 rium will never grow. Probably they will. But success is uncertain, and it is far less 

 trouble for a traveller to secure seeds in the way proposed, than to dry specimens for the 

 purpose, even if, when dried, it were perfectly certain that they would grow. Many sorts 

 might, at a pinch, be sent home in the same vial, either mixed together or separated by 

 some little contrivance, and thus half a dozen bottles which would travel in a coat pocket 

 would do well, a duty which a bulky package of dried plants would certainly do ill, if at all." 



Elizabethan Architectuke. — From a very pleasant new book, entitled " Shakspeare's 

 England," by G. W. Thornbury, we extract the following passages : — 



" The Elizabethan houses are wonderful in their individuality. Tliey seem to share all 

 the hopes and joys, and passions of the builder. They have sunny spots, caves of shadow, 

 bright clear quadrangles, and gloomy corridors. There is no mood in your mind they will 

 not fit. They have about them a calm stately dignity, neither self-conscious nor arrogant. 

 They do not ojipress you with a sense of wealth, but greet you like old friends. They are 

 neither flimsy nor tawdry, nor so massy and dark as to remind you of a workhouse and a 

 gaol. They seem fit for all seasons. They are cool in summer and cheery in winter. The 

 terrace is for June, the porch for December. The bay window is so clear and airy that you 

 could not believe the same house had that red cavern of a fireplace, the very shrine of 

 comfort and warmth, hallowed both by legend and recollection. Alas ! that one cannot 

 order an avenue ready made, that one cannot purchase a genealogy. In these old houses 

 the portraits frown at a mere purchaser as a stranger ; the ghosts refuse to leave their 

 churchyard beds to welcome or disturb you, and the very tenants look ujion you as an up- 

 start and an interloper." * * " The bay window, invented a century before the Tudor age, 

 was at first simply a projecting opening between two buttresses, generally placed at the end 

 of a room, and occupying the bay of a building. When placed at the end of a great hall, 

 it reached in a broad crystal sheet from the roof to the floor. It sometimes consisted of 



