146 FILICES 
unfortunate Duke of Monmouth, after the battle of Sedgemoor, concealed 
himself for some time successfully beneath the Bracken boughs. One day, 
however, emerging in some degree from his retreat, he sat down, and 
amused himself by cutting some of the stems of the fern under which he had 
slept on the past night. Some peasants, who noticed him, were surprised to 
see a man, clad in homely garb like their own, with delicate white fingers, on 
one of which glittered the diamond of a ring; and when, soon after, the 
reward was offered for the apprehension of Monmouth, they recalled the 
circumstance, and sought for him where he lay concealed beneath the 
withered heap of fern. No wonder that imagination could readily trace in 
the heart of the fern some semblance which could identify the plant with the 
remembrance of the two fugitive princes, the father and son, whose fates were 
so different. The oak-tree is still believed to be portrayed there ; and the 
author, during childhood, shared in a belief very general in the neighbour- 
hood of her home. In Germany, this figure is commonly called the Prussian 
Double Eagle ; and older, probably, than any other tradition is the received 
opinion that the marks in the fern stem represent an eagle, and gave to the 
plant one of its common names, the Eagle Fern. ‘This idea is casually alluded 
to in one of the colloquies of Erasmus, when one of the speakers observes of 
the Toadstone, or Crepaudine: “Perhaps they imagine the likeness of a 
toad ; as on cutting the root of fern we imagine an eagle.” 
In the thick shady woods in which our Brake luxuriates, its root-stems 
creep many feet below the surface of the soil. They are as thick as the 
finger, and covered with a beautiful soft velvety down. The young fronds, 
which appear in May, are curled and drooping, of a delicate whitish-green, 
and very tender, having both that starch-like odour and flavour peculiar to 
ferns. By September their bright green is touched with golden hue, which 
finally yields to the brown tint colouring the crisp fronds as they rustle in 
the winter winds. 
The outline of the frond of this fern is somewhat triangular, and it is 
either twice or thrice pinnate. The greater number of fronds are thrice 
pinnate, having several pair of pinne, with twice pinnate branches. In some 
cases all the pinnules are entire ; in others they are pinnatifid. The stalk is 
usually rather more than half the length of the frond; it is green, and while 
young somewhat downy ; but as the fern grows older, it becomes very hard 
and rigid, and has so many angles upon it, that many a wanderer in the 
woods has suffered from grasping it too hastily. In places where the fronds 
do not attain any luxuriance, they are more decidedly triangular ; they have 
then the appearance of being three-branched, because the other pairs of 
pinne, so usual on the finer specimens, are not in this case developed. 
The fronds of the Brake are almost all fertile ; yet, let us gather the plant 
at what season we may, no fructification is to be seen on its under surface 
until we search for it; not that the capsules are not abundant, for, during 
autumn, they cluster in profusion on almost every plant, but they are hidden 
under the margin. In this plant the margin of the frond forms the indusium. 
It is thickened into a rim, beneath which lies a row of capsules, which run 
all round the edge of the fern. If our fathers had known this fern only, we 
should not have wondered at the idea which some, at least, seem to have 
