Our Native Canadian Ferns. 



" Hie to haunts, right seldom seen, 



" Lovely, lonesome, cold, cold, and green.'* 



" Where the copsewood is the greenest, 

 " Where the fountain glistens sheenest, 

 '• Where the Lady-fern grows strongest, 

 " Where the morning dew lies longest. 



" Hie Away ; Hie Away." — Scott. 



Under the Natural System of botanical classification, the vegetable 

 Tcingdom is divided into two sub-kingdoms, viz., Phpenogamia or Flower- 

 ing Plants, and Cryptogamia or Flowerless Plants. The latter of these is 

 again divided into three divisions ; the first of these divisions is distin- 

 guished by the plant having a regular stem or axis, which grows by the 

 extension of the apex only ; it is to this division that Ferns belong. 



A fern consists of the frond or leafy part of the plant on which the 

 sori or fruit dots are situated ; these sori are made up of clusters of 

 sporangia containing the spores — the seeds, in other words, of the fern. 

 The stem which bears the frond is called the stipe, i.e., the naked 

 portion below the pinnce or leafy part ; the rachis is the continuation 

 of the stem, which extends to the apex or end of the frond. 



The lower part, or subterranean stem is known as the caudex, and 

 by later writers as the rhizome ; the latter we shall adopt, as the former 

 term is usually now confined to the upright stem of the Tree Ferns. 



The rhizome is not the true root, but that part from which the 

 fibrils or roots proceed ; the rhizome is an extension of the axis, and 

 bears something of the same relation to the roots as the tap-root of a 

 tree or woody-stemmed plant does. 



This rhizome or root-stock is covered in most ferns with a black or 

 brown bark of bitter astringent nature, with coarse scales, and soft 

 chaff or hairy wool. This root-stock often extends below the surface of 

 the ground horizontally, and contains the embryo fronds wrapped up in 



