CHAPTER IX. 
FERNS AND THEIR RELATIVES 
IF we had chosen beauty alone as the basis of our classi- 
fication we should certainly not yet have arrived at the 
ferns, for in grace and perfection of form, in purity and 
depth of colour, they may claim, as a group, almost 
the highest place in the plant world. Even when we 
adopt complexity and division of labour as the test, they 
come very close to the top of our imagined school, and 
their life history is full of the greatest interest. They 
have not the unlimited range of the alge and fungi, and 
even flowering plants are found to bear greater extremes 
of heat and cold, but happily for us they flourish in 
temperate climates. Standing by a waterfall in a wood 
in England one can picture the scene in those West 
Indian Islands, where heat and moisture are almost 
always present together, and where the fern family 
have their choicest home. If you would realise the 
kind of atmosphere in which ferns reach their highest 
development you have but to spend a few minutes in 
the great fern house at Kew Gardens. 
It is true that seaweeds in the ocean depths grow to 
an enormous size, and puff-balls increase to six feet 
in diameter to exalt the claims of the funguses; but 
these are mere masses of simple structure, repeating 
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