FERN TRIBE 137 
fern, whose graceful attitude and elegant outline won for it its distinctive 
name, is indeed the loveliest of all our larger ferns. It grows abundantly 
in many sheltered and moist woods, attaining there its greatest luxuriance, 
and its somewhat pale green fronds arising in such places to the height of 
three or four feet. It may often be seen, too, gracing spots of another 
character, for the slopes of grassy hills are not without its clumps. 
Walter Scott, alluding to this plant in ‘‘ Waverley,” mentions its love for 
the moist shady woodlands :— 
‘* Where the copsewood is the greenest, 
Where the fountain glistens sheenest, 
Where the morning dew lies longest, 
There the Lady Fern grows strongest.” 
Calder Campbell, too, in some lines which he has written for this volume, 
well describes such a spot as the Lady Fern delights to haunt— 
‘Tf you would see the Lady Fern, 
In all her graceful power, 
Go look for her where the woodlarks learn 
Love-songs in a summer bower ; 
Where not far off, nor yet close by 
A merry stream trips on, 
Just near enow for an old man’s eye 
To watch the waters run, 
And leap o’er many a cluster white 
Of crowfoots o’er them spread ; 
While hart’s-tongues glint with a green more bright, 
Where the brackens make their bed. 
Ferns all—and lovely all—yet each 
Yielding in charms to her 
Whose natural graces Art might teach 
High lessons to confer. 
**Go look for the pimpernel by day, 
lor Silene’s flowers by night ; 
For the first loves to bask in the sunny ray, 
And the last woos the moon’s soft light : 
But day or night, the Lady Fern 
May catch and charm your eyes, 
When the sun to gold her emeralds turn, 
Or the moon lends her silver dyes. - 
But seek her not in early May, 
: For a Sibyl then she looks, 
With wrinkled fronds that seem to say, 
‘Shut up are my wizard books !’ 
Then search for her in the Summer woods, 
Where rills keep moist the ground, 
Where foxgloves from their spotted hoods 
Shake pilfering insects round ; 
Fair are the tufts of meadow-sweet 
That haply blossom nigh ; 
Fair are the whorls of violet 
Prunella shows hard by ; 
But not by burn, in wood or vale, 
Grows anything so fair 
As the plumy crest of emerald pale, 
That waves in the wind and soughs in the gale, 
Of the Lady Fern, when the sunbeanis turn 
To gold her delicate hair !” 
The Lady Fern is very generally distributed throughout England, and is 
still more common in Ireland, where it abounds on almost all the bogs. 
Iv.—18 
